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Europium

Europium

We're having a hard time
believing you are who
you say you are. You
have to admit, your story
is a little too far fetched:

You say you were discovered
by an French man named
‘Demarcay’ who named you
Europium--and now, a hundred
years later, you just happen to be

used to demarcate real Euros
from fake ones? Come on,
that’s just a little too contrived.
How could we think your story
was anything but counterfeit?
By nathan long


The Europium Ideal


There is an element of surprise
that, in Nineteen-one, the Latinised

europium became the name of a "new metal"
If only nation states had settled

(like this generously titled element)
on the way of peaceful intent,

saved the bullets, spared the dead
(man and horse), kept their head,

learned the gentle way of xenotime
where lanthonoids lie side by side:

cerium, lanthanum. They don't ignite.
But no, the fools behaved like monazite -

an ore with thorium, and ytrrium
whose radiation shadows wars to come.
By PHILIP BURTON

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