"Darwin in 1881" (Gjertrud Schnackenberg)

...with all his miracles

Reduced to sailors' tales,

He sits up in the dark. The islands loom.

His seasickness upwells,

Silence creeps by in memory as it crept

By him on water, while the sailors slept,

From broken eggs, and vacant tortoise shells.

His voyage around the cape of middle age

Comes, with a feat of insight, to a close,

The same way Prospero's

Ended before he left the stage

To be led home across the blue-white sea,

When he had spoken of the clouds and globe,

Breaking his wand, and taking off his robe:

Knowledge increases unreality.

He quickly dresses.

Form wavers like his shadow on the stair,

As he descends, in need of air

To cure his dizziness.

Down past the shipsunk emptiness

Of grownup childrens' rooms and hallways where

The family portraits blindly stare,

Haunted by each others' likenesses...