Friday, December 08, 2006

Homage to Marie Curie

Homage to Marie Curie

Homage to Marie Curie (1998)

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
--Marie Curie

Power

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.

--Adrienne Rich

2 comments:

enigma4ever said...

thanks for posting on her....no one ever writes on her...
she was amazing...she carried on when her husband died..and in the end her research did kill her...but she thought it was worth it...her daughter has written a book about her- the name escapes me- but I will look it up...

so nice over here..wisdom, history, and great writing and of course your art- what could be better?

cruelanimal said...

Yes, I have much admiration for her. I've made several images about her over the years.

Thanks for coming by. It's always a pleasure to hear from you.