She recalls the dress she wore the day her future
was arranged, her duty done. He was a good match,
though twenty years her senior, dignified
and handsome, the more so for not knowing it,
the foremost mathematician of the Age,
voted to the Académie at twenty-four
for work that only a handful could understand.
A young bride, jealous of his passion for numbers.
Mealtimes, or with the children, he was forbidden
to dwell on worlds, though she would find him afterwards
scribbling by candle-light despite his promises.
The heavens were his playthings, you see. And being
honoured as the French Newton merely provoked him;
could his own name not bear his reputation’s weight?
About his work, they never spoke, though he tried once
to liken the regulation of the planets
to the hidden clockwork of a well-run house,
with linen fresh each day, his dinner promptly served
and the children lined up for him to kiss goodnight,
though the universe needed no prayers at bedtime.
It was an insult to suppose God need tinker,
he told that paysan Napoleon once. Which proved
how little he knew of the chaos below stairs:
of servants leaving without notice, and accounts
that would not come right. It was no surprise to her
the heavens vexed him like children on rainy days.
Nor was the path of their own fate so well ordered,
the untimely death of their daughter broke his heart,
which a son without heirs did nothing to mend.
All their married life she shared him with his gift,
which drove him like a scourge. If only God had chosen
another to explain His creation to us.
