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