Galileo's Daughter

Galileo's daughter looks through a telescope at the stars.

To her, they seem very feminine--

She feels that she would like to dance with them

And make men weak-kneed with desire.

Galileo's daughter pauses next to a fountain and sees the stars reflected in the water.

To her, they seem like white horses drawing a carriage--

The carriage is night and she is riding in it,

Only to stop at a fountain so that she can look in.

Her father's friends call her "child" though she is twenty-two.

They set out their hearts like charts,

And like a latitudinal line,

She splits them.

Galileo's daughter lays on her back like a boy, determined to count the stars.

To her, they are like salt spilled across a cloth which then overturns into the oceans.

She steals a sextant and takes up life at sea, the shores of which are her skin.

All through the dog days, she plays Sirius to a series of lovers;

The boys won't last the summer,

But the girls sing rondeaux

And dance in the most beautiful arrangements

Beyond the ken of stunned scientists

At their instruments.

________

Art by Dante Rossetti