Dissolution

I am now sensible that I must withdraw from your acquaintance, and see neither you nor the rest of my friends any more, if I may but leave them quietly.
                                                 - Newton in a letter to Samuel Pepys, September 1693


I.

Newton’s life moved toward
and then away from one point:
at first, experiment and investigation

(he wrote Halley, “I keep the subject constantly before me
and wait till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little,
into a full and clear light”);

later public life:  London, the presidency of the Royal Society,
warden and then Master of the Mint.

In between:  the ‘Black Year,’ the vicious madness.

Writing to Pepys and to John Locke,
full of his fear of ‘embroilment’:

Locke had endeavoured to embroil him with women,
and Pepys, he feared, with favor-seeking,

accusatory, vituperative—

Then it went away.  He apologized,
told Locke he’d wished him dead
but didn’t mean it. 

The letters they exchanged
were loving letters,

Locke:  I am more ready to forgive you
than you can be to desire it—


II.

His house was furnished all in red and black.
(Nine black leather chairs, two square glasses
in black frames) and gold—gilded mirror
in his bedroom, over the chimney.

Away—away—dark warren of the mind.

Five pair of crimson mohair window vallance cornishes,
a crimson mohair bed complete with case curtains of crimson Harrateen,
the crimson mohair hangings of the room lined with canvas,
a crimson sattee cushion,
a crimson easy chair and case,
six crimson cushions filled with down,
a small India skreen, thirteen India prints—


III.

Resurgence of capacity:
he answered Pepys’ fretting
with formulae, helping his friend
enumerate some odds, a probability for dice rolls.

Everything fixed.  Betting on recovery
we calculate; we pause, assigning values. 

What we wait for:

the willingness to be forgiven
to rise up full and clear in those we love.