NEWTON'S QUÆSTIONES

for Diana Burrell

It was his wigless lump of a head on the table
and not the apple. Isaac, working too late,
nodding off. Bang. The apple stayed
in orbit, curving imperceptibly

earthward two hundred years. Ever
a hard case, wanted to burn down the house
around Mater and Step-Pater Smith,
their bed vanishing in a billow of nastiness.

Then crazy at fifty, paranoid of his pals,
like the Mariner, spine to the mast,
neck tendons like the back of a hand
gripping his throat, the nautilus coils

of his ears sucking in sound of the ship
breaking apart. Plummy eyes glued open.
The wall of fog is like a rusty dreadnought,
it plates popping rivets, sundering in slow-mo.

And then there is silence. His arm frozen
in an iron salute demands it. Buildings
are built of sarsen blocks of impeccable
proportion, harmonious as the inaudible

spheres laid out on graph paper. Silent
but for the low hum in the engine-room
as the earth grinds on its axis. Bomb-doors
open and the apple smashes to cheesy

fragments in a spray of cider. The house,
the bed, the worrying chums all gone.
Sir Isaac awakes, his thinking cap awry.
The cosmos moves out. We call it static.