Curie
for Olga Kandror

Glowing light surrounds you,
your fingers radium-irradiated
and capable of holding
a thousand bonds, a net of fireflies,
alpha particles calypsoing
in your hair.
What was the necessity
of retrieving Poland in polonium?
Perhaps you thought
about a young girl at sixteen,
Marie, obsessively studying science
at night, reflected in Parisian glass.
Your mother frowned, your lights
still on, your eyes alight
with the new calculation, seeking
patiently, clarity, a cure, what
you looked for, dressed in starless night.

Your ears hummed with the insect
noises of a power line
through monotone background,
waiting for crackling sound. Trading
in Poland for Paris, you felt
yourself infinitely tiny,
a particle projected, opening
like a cluster of mimosas,
embracing Pierre, his awkwardness,
his inwardness, "the kind of mind
that required stillness." The bond
that held you both, the glowing thing
you both admired at night.
Martyr of luminous-dial painters,
you lie dressed in white, rejecting
your last black day. You smile, too noble
to hold a grudge against the men
that hissed you in L'Academie.
You name your fireflies--radium,
polonium--with your last breath.

Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Webmaster. Last modified Thu, Oct 18, 2001.