Fault

Outside Newton’s House

67 Outside Newton’s House April 1999 That’s what the alchemists want to do: to turn one element into another. —Copenhagen 1. Abstract: Error. Crime. No, make that trespass. Disaster. Redemption. Journey by water. Brackets: Two wars. Interval: with goat. 2. Question: How do we know what we’re seeing? What sees us? 3. Problem: Just staying dry in this country. I’d ridden the train Through rain- and glass-bent light to find—no bus. “Come all the way from America to see that house, Didn’t you?” the cabby kept saying. The truth: not exactly. I’d come from Leeds. Metered now, counted out, timed back, I marked the moment cost becomes no object. My luck: They’d changed the closing day. What I needed: My own change. Clothes, fortune, or better, element: Water to gold, cloud to sun. What Newton Spent his life’s coin looking for. I wasn’t Going to get it, but I had on sneakers and jeans (Still only damp), and the fence wasn’t high. The old glass was undraped against the eye. 68 4. Hypothesis: One does what one can: looks for signs, A trace of any presence; looks for that tree— Not the original, but scion of its scion— Though apples are only a fragrant hope, beDraggled by rain, and that delicious fall, The coming into mind of gravity, a bold Lie, but lovely, its ripening arc all Fulfillment, late summer, fields gone gold. But soldiers marched for, against the crown Just there, on that highway, and in the cities death Rode the backs of rats, on human breath. So he lay here, tucked up and thinking. Newton, Counting blessings, counting the family sheep, Dreamed not only spheres, numbers, or light Divided—spectral day from ghosted night— But of what’s elemental, buried deep In the bred bone. Could he change his fortune? In this room I peer at, hands cupped to glass, He dreams on. Rain trickles down my back, as Newton paces another afternoon Brilliant with sun. He’s thinking nothing great. No, that’s me. How I meet the goat (Scion of scion?)—he presses against my jeans, Expelling rainwater like a goaty sponge. 69 5. Methodology: Take what comes. So I pet the goat. And, Even wet, he has a certain sweetness— At least of face, its pure demands, And of soft ear, of vibrato voice. His song rewards my laying on of hands. You’d never know there still lies, past that hill, The highway—now the M2—aroar, driven Wild by hearts that throb with tested metal; And, beyond that, across the channel, Boys urge other engines into flight, Hardly knowing what they drop, battle Chaos they rise above. They’re so light, And I’m no longer good at the dire, I find, Or even the sad, as if all my eye touched Turned to gold, or to gold’s illusion— And there is no difference, or not much, Is there? So long as illusion holds. All that glisters, etcetera, but who knows the real Nugget we want from any fool’s gold? Or, against the world’s blast, Newton’s idyll. 70 6. Experiment: It turns out the other gate was open. And the caretaker forgives my nose, pressed To his personal window, my gaze vexed By his undergarments, futilely strung To dry across the kitchen. Not on my Own account, or even the driver’s refrain— All the way from America, didn’t she?— But Henry is never wrong about a person, Is he?—and Henry, love being blind, Bleats his after me. A small test: To change a goat’s heart, to turn a mind From stubborn gristle into tenderness, Then walk through wet jockeys into history. Say It all started here—light, attraction, Every newfangled idea of heaven—but why This? The past looks safe: so many turns To choose from: at Cambridge, skipping all those pages, Newton writes the protest: Amicus Plato, Amicus Aristoteles magis Amica veritas. 71 7. Results: The caretaker thinks I’m nutso, But harmless, unlike you, Isaac, you I hardly dare invoke. All of that Dark creeping under ceilings, beamed so low You had to divide light to see it Enumerated. Outside, it just rains harder On Mrs. Thatcher’s hometown, though her drear Decade’s finally over; this...