Cole Swensen

 

André-Marie Ampère 1775–1836

electrically rowed Rousseau from a wide green meadow

                                                                                        into his brain

along with Buffon and Diderot

                                                 and the entire Enlightenment embroidered

in fractions, thus confusing

                                              poetry and mathematics. He stood back

and declared:

                        An umbrella could envelope

                                                                      a good part

of the village of Poleymieux en route to reviving the library

                                                                                             and why

did my wife die so young?

                                          Wrote out the psalms on his palm in the

electrodynamic molecules of his time

                                                           which he carried next to his heart

in a heart-shaped box

                                     obsessed

                                                   by Ørsted’s magnetized needle, leaping

full-grown and fully armed

                                           into the periodic table. Noble metals

isolated and at war

                               put each order in order

                                                                      and was the first to define

electric current as a circulation

                                                gazing out over the Mediterranean until it dies.