21

Newton, thin as a mathematical line,

Aquiline nose, fierce-eyed and secretive—

You kept a notebook of questions,

The dip of your quill in an ink of oak galls.

You sought the gods’ hidden knowledge,

Sketched in that notebook your pictures

Of pendulums, levers—

You pondered the sloping of curves,

Tangents and lines—

Toyed with your series of numbers

That marched on forever like waves of the sea—

Thought of all motion as tiny infinities,

Fluxions and calculus.

You found equations that govern

The comets, the path of the moon, gravity,

Curve of the stream in my bath.

You split the colors of light.

“All can be known.”

You ate from the Forbidden Tree,

Then planted new trees.

Modern Prometheus, you stole

The gods’ fire and gave it to men.

Suspicious recluse,

You grasped the gears

Of the galactic clock.

You made the mortal immortal.

Tell me one thing that is true.