A Hat for Schrödinger’s Cat | Yogesh Patel
POETRY
11/6/20261 min read
One bear keeps whispering:
choose me or the world ends
And yet you’re locked
on the torn red one
pushed to the corner
It needs a hat that the cat lost, you despair
for a tea party with the Mad Hatter
I nod
That hat?
It once belonged to Schrödinger’s cat
Nothing else will do
But wait
what if the toys
are
watching
‘the’ watcher?
Behind the curtain
your toys are choosing you
from those unruly colours
They enchant you
to rearrange your picks
This is a prowler:
a toy-verse
that rattles even when the lights are on
full of eyes without faces
full of faces without names
The speechless toys can’t guide you
Only you know
the quantum crib they crawl from
in
and out
The love you find, my pumpkin
is not discovered
but returned
when you reached in
A perfect toy
sleeps
in each of us
until we blink
and it opens its eyes
Yogesh Patel has received an MBE for literature. A co-editor of Skylark since 1969, he enjoys the Freedom of the City of London. With LP records, films, radio, fiction and non-fiction books, including poetry collections and multiple awards to his credit, he has read in the House of Lords, UK. His poetry has been archived on the Moon via NASA/SpaceX/Firefly missions. Patel's award-winning collection, The Rapid, is published by The London Magazine, and his latest collection, 2½: Two and a Half, is just published by Poetrywala. Patel is a “Commended Winner” of Faber’s Fab Prize 2025 and a winner of Poetry Archive’s WorldView Now 2025.