He heard in harp music the soul’s mathematics ,
The veiled bride’s murmurs of rapturous love,
Saw in the candle flame reason’s revelations;
Lonely passion drove hard bargains with the night,
As he fought himself to standstill, thwarted, pained.
To hell with his inferiors, all those idiotic professors
Of philosophy, and their worthless scribbling,-
“The ignorant are always the most ready to write!”-
He alone could correct their errors and confusion,
And right disorder, in accordance with the divine.
He flyted fools with sarcasm, provoked into contempt
By any impudent challenge, outraged by stupidity,
And damned inconstant feebleminded womankind.
The child saw his dead mother’s face on the pillows
Of the great red-curtained bed and her coffin loaded
Onto a canal-boat and towed to the cemetery
In his poor monkish room, he set spiders fighting,
Delighting in their battles, laughing out loud,
Then returned, thin black hidalgo, to his desk
And microscope, to grind exquisite lenses,
Painstakingly calculating the optimum angle
For bending parallel rays to the focus.
Cursed heretic, renegade, synagogue’s excommunicate,
Questioning dogma with calm relelentles insolence,
He secretly worked into the night by lamplight,
Reason’s spy, sure of ultimate solutions,
Disdaining the trivial superstitious minds
Of other thinkers, starving his body as he fed
His mind. Peering rapt into a microscope,
He tussled with algebra and vexed lust,
Unsettling beauties parading before him
Like the flaunting whores of Amsterdam.
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