ODE TO ROSALIND FRANKLIN

“with love and squalor”

 

 

                        Had ever Science more than one

                        true love, the bride that nature won,

                                    worshipping his truth

                                    with all her starry youth?

 

                        Her eyes were first of all to see,

                        her hands to capture faithfully

                                    the chain of being’s face,

                                    the spiral stair to grace.

 

                        Self-slaughtered with much imaging,

                        she sank untimely in a ring

                                    of paunchy pirates bloated

                                    with advantage, gloating

 

                        thieves and warlocks, hear their canting.

                        They died as men by sycophancy,

                                    their meaning of life self-looted.

                                    She lives on where the truth is.