35

This is the cosmos of measuring.

Numbered the barrels of olives,

The crates of pocked oranges,

The kilos magnesium sulfate, the times

Of the shippings, the paychecks, the days

Without rain—all of it kept

In these columns and rows.

Great Lavoisier, bony-nosed,

Eyes far apart, silent,

Preferring your studies to play—

You were the master of measuring.

You were the ruthless accountant

Of chemical quantities,

Reckoning that mass never vanished

Despite changing form.

With your scale and your balance,

Your cylinders, candles, and bellows,

You tallied the weights of the world.

Phosphorus, sulfur, and minium,

Charcoal all breathed your air.

You found sharp truths in the numbers and grams,

Conceived substance as change,

Transformation, with quantity always the same.

You found the secret between the old elements—

Fire and water and air—joined by oxygen.

You believed only in what you could measure:

“Trust nothing but facts.”

You were Magellan of molecules,

Substance, and flame.

You showed the cleaving of food

In the body to be a cold fire.

Great Lavoisier, you counted grains

Of the vast hourglass

In a slow summing up of eternity.