Standing outside
the former home
of Einstein,
in Princeton,
I see a plain
and unimpressive
two-story abode
dressed in
leafy ordinariness.
And in the house
once lived the man
who rewrote
the universe,
and pointed to
new narratives
about how we
see who we are
in its grand
and unfathomable glory.
This ordinary house,
this ordinary Jew,
who fled the terror;
this extraordinary vision
that enables us to look far
and yet be able
to destroy
ourselves completely
through the power
of an equation.
In this plain
and unimpressive house,
that you can
walk by
without turning your eyes,
existed a mind
of poetic
and mathematical force,
whose wisdom
and madness
turned our attention
to what creates
us all
and what drives
our species to
its evolutionary end.
5/8/2016