New poem

Einstein's Brain

Miss Youds came over from the BBC
to record an interview with Dr. E.
for broadcasting upon the radio.
I acted as her secretary, sent
on many an errand; where she went, I went,
or on occasion merely wished to go.

The date was April, nineteen fifty-five
(some Alabama folk are still alive
who saw the spring of that portentous year)
when I, a southern coed, held Einstein
upon a pedestal, almost divine,
and nothing to his disrepute would hear.

Around the campus broadcast studio,
whence Youds upon her pilgrimage would go,
excitement reigned, not least in my young breast;
for in her train at Princeton I might land,
perhaps to see Einstein and shake his hand—
at least to tread the halls his steps had blessed.

Right close upon the day we meant to leave
came news from Princeton: All the world would grieve
to hear the man had died and was no more.
Miss Youds went into epileptic fits,
cursed Einstein, the United States and its
whole population, smoked and stamped and swore,

and then went back to London in a huff;
of this benighted land she'd had enough.
She asked me to go with her. I declined
in fear of her great temper, stayed behind,
and forty years ahead, in a glass jar
saw Einstein's brain, like pickled cauliflower.

By JRC 2/25/14

*

 

I'm still working on that last rhyme.