Not Enough Statues

Einstein takes takes a nap at the patent office in Berne, 1903.

He is nodding over some cock-
eyed induction motor. Surely
his colleagues at the Federal

Office for Intellectual Property
think him astute and industrious,
unchatty, politely curt, but really

it is words—those twice-removed
machines of inhibition, those
stunted markers for information—

that set his teeth on edge, that start
his feet to shuffling. He does
regret it, sometimes, as he did

when he told his mother in no
uncertain terms that he would
be married to Mileva, a Serb,

within the week. Oh, oh—
Albert, she said. Oh Albert, oh.
He sees this now, at his desk,

his pen set slowly down—his
head, too, set down, slowly.
He sees, as his eyes close,

at the narrow space where light
turns slowly into dark: Mach bands,
lateral inhibition, unsharp mask.

And these things are symbols,
they are elements. They are, yes,
elemental, pre-articulate,

things that do not sit still,
that a person can manipulate,
gently, without fear of

splitting them, can carry,
unsullied by insight and
judgment, into newness.

A cosmological constant; the way
a model of Brownian motion is
more convenient than accurate;

the duality of wave and particle;
a gravitational lens that bends
light into comprehensibility;

the way his father, terrified,
must have carried him, at one year,
into a nameless Munich square

and Catholic school to live.
He can see it, now: the way
their bodies—even his, a tiny

infant self—fold the light around
themselves; how every thing is
a curvaceous force, enfolded.

He can see his father walk, three
steps up to the door, and knock.
How his hand shone, the energy there.