Robert Gauldie


A Newton Suite: Poems and Drawings



Six drawings and six poems about Isaac Newton.

---

Angels Walk

Angels walk across Sir Isaac's back.
It doesn't hurt. In fact, he says, it's rather pleasant.
He counts it as a cure of aches that plague the aged.
Their feet are warm, and well shaped, symmetrical,
Tanned like the feet of all those slim contessas
Who wear their clothes so gracefully; á la hauteur.
That's what they are like, Sir Isaac says.
Innocently knowing and modestly superior,
Walking across his back in the service of the Lord.

Sir Isaac likes their tunics, purple and gold.
He says, you can hear the dull noise gold makes.
They are like Assyrians, with widened child-like eyes.
They always carry lyres, tablets of gold, books, pens, letters,
And hasten slowly in their own calm smileless way.
But their wings are hard, and rattle like leaves,
Constantly twitching, nervous, shimmering, eager to leave.
Blue distance hangs about them like a halo.
A bright light; unseen allseeing eyes walk with them,
Watched and watching, incuriously kind
In the way that all omniscient beings are.
Merciful burden to old Sir Isaac,
Walking across his back in the service of the Lord.

The Whaler's Song

There is not a tune, not a melody,
Not notes, not line, no pitch,
Nothing is repeated, not repeatable.
There is no message but the self,
Endlessly crying, I, into the ocean,
Fadeing and falling like the dead shells
Of animalicules and skeletons of plants
Raining into the endless, oozing, ocean deeps.

Mozart was a whale.
An urgent coruscation, crying, I,
Showering glittering melody and sound.
And gone.

We are the sailors out of Nantucket,
Me and old Sir Isaac.
Hard-arsed, our straining oars
Drag us tireless over unlined deeps.
Mozartized, we mark out in passing rhythms,
Comparing our allotted progress
Down in our dark hold.
Together we row, follow out exact
Each note and line, repeat the endlessly repeatable.
Oh, how well we do it!
Tricked out as someone else's selfish self
Hunting the deeps for egos to kill.

The Salamander

Sir Isaac fiddles with his weskit buttons,
Gold against the scarlet, the salamander,
Unchanged against the flame.
"The sexagismal part and the septaguint.
Do you follow?" Says Sir Isaac. We both now know
That all that fineness calculate no longer matters.

He turns the gold coins in his pockets,
Clicks the chapes and brittania buckles on his corkéd shoes.
Fastidious, avoids the water and the mud,
As if it could have ever stuck against
That gleaming leather's subtle richness.

"Will you take tea?" Says Sir Isaac. While Humphrey
Waits, ever patient, with the shock-haired silent footman.
"Perhaps tomorrow?" As if he didn't know tomorrow
Was already here, and that all tomorrow's morrows
Hung round him like a halo.

"Where was the logic of it?" I asked again.
Sir Isaac smiles and Humphrey turns away.
The gold coins click and the buckles rattle
And Berkley's shadow lies beneath his foot, a stain against the stone.
Those salamandrine eyes are gleaming, reflecting flames.
"Perhaps tomorrow?" Says Sir Isaac,
Dusting ashes from his weskit buttons.

Flying to Honolulu

It is four in the morning.
Only the trembling murmur of engines
Muting the quick laughter of the stewardesses
Marks our meteoric progress across the night sky.

I remember four of the clock in another morning.
Quitting Richmond for London by boat along the Thames,
Old Sir Isaac and Humphrey, bundled in frock coats against the cold.
Fleets of gardeners journeyed with us.
Ten sail of apricock boats, as I remember, at Strand-Bridge;
And melon-girls of Sara Sewell's stall at Covent Garden,
Chaffing with the sweeps of who was Eve and who the devil,
Their quick laughter drifting across the water.
The hackney horses stamped and jingled at Nine-Elmes,
Clattering away with Humphrey and Sir Isaac to Westminster,
To treat with Bishops whose feigned hypotheses
Order earth and sky and each our place between.

The trolley's clatter wakes us to breakfast on apricots and melons,
Sailing too high above the earth to see,
Too low below the heavens to feel,
Sustained between by only old Sir Isaac's unseen hand.

The Diary of Columbus

This day we sailed on.
The wind was fitful, heavy with rain,
Promising thunder and squalls.
The sea surging past the stern
Flecked with foam, caring nothing for us,
Sullen and hostile, rolling into the west.
Sir Isaac paced from mast to mast
Silencing the crew lashing the pinnace,
Thankful for the end of rowing
But watchful, and wary of the rising wind.
This will be your moment, Sir Isaac said,
Not the honours heaped at Isabella's court.
It is here that you have triumphed,
Like d'Aubisson at the sepulchre,
Stared at by goats among the crumbling stones,
And a suleiman selling dried dates and bitter almonds.
This day we sailed on.

IN PHILOSOPHIA EXPERIMENTALI

Sir Isaac rides the elevators,
Avoiding physicists. Sometimes he stops to chat,
Talking away the passing time between the floors.

Sir Isaac sides with realtors, lending money.
If you ask, he will tell you,
He likes a little flutter that promises a little profit.
He likes a little hobby to inject a little interest
Into a boring day.

All of us start early at the math-em-atikal soirées.
Chaps gather round for macaroons, cab-sav and canapés,
Little gifties pass, lagniappe, acknowledging their condescend.
Wedgewood cups and luke-warm prose;
Bearded chinwags, whose agitated monologues,

Preen their claims to academic fame.

Sweeney's Bar is fun.
Drunken Marvell has his hand in Margarethe's pants,
Burton roars,
Rolling rhymes like cannonballs,
Winking at the waitress. "Show me your bum."
Weierstrasse grins, a beery bear, slyly stacking
Glasses into manifolds.

Sir Isaac rides the elevators,
Avoiding physicists. Sometimes he stops to chat,
Talking away the passing time between the floors.

Bob Gauldie is a scientist who is reasonably well-known in the little pond of fish science (http://robert.gauldie.com). Bob has also paid his dues in the tribal world of University Administration; always an environment that encourages one to be philosophical.


 
 
 
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