Testing on Steel and Glass
By Carl Rakosi
“If you open the brain
from whence sprang Solomon and Aristotle
and separate the lips
in the fissure of Sylvius
a triangle of cortex
will appear.
This is the Island of Reil.”
Well put, anatomist.
We are all careful, men of earth
(a blind man can sense a post).
Thus Newton pondered on falling apples
and a Mixtec carved a humanist in jaguar bone.
“How happy I was,”
wrote the scientist after a long illness,
“when once again
I had something to investigate.”
Copyright Credit: Carl Rakosi, “Testing on Steel and Glass” from The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (Orono: The National Poetry Foundation, 1986). Used with the permission of Marilyn J. Kane.
Source: The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (National Poetry Foundation, 1986)