THE PERIODIC TABLE
OF THE ELEMENTS
Cardboard and string, and a box of clips,
with someone's scissors left open: it seemed
like a kindergarten frolic to me. The light
was beating on the edge of the tables and the
room smelled like a layer of varnish.
-
I'd ventured everywhere, and now this place -
a museum room of restorative art or some kid's
room from Hell. An essential point was to
realize how little difference there was.
-
Rossetti called his money 'tin' - a quaint
English version, I guess, of the same
stuff Americans once called cabbage.
Swinburne, no slouch, holed up his
temper like Mercury in fleeting
sentences and a swift pass to emotion.
Hard to read today, yes, but things change.
Osmium and rhenium - whoever heard of them?
-
Yet there they are too, numbers 75 and 76.
It's amazing - like the light from the windows
or this crazy room, how everything jumbled gets
named and assorted : eventual, gradual, at
one time or another. Soon enough. Selenium,
palladium and lutetium too.
Cardboard and string, and a box of clips,
with someone's scissors left open: it seemed
like a kindergarten frolic to me. The light
was beating on the edge of the tables and the
room smelled like a layer of varnish.
-
I'd ventured everywhere, and now this place -
a museum room of restorative art or some kid's
room from Hell. An essential point was to
realize how little difference there was.
-
Rossetti called his money 'tin' - a quaint
English version, I guess, of the same
stuff Americans once called cabbage.
Swinburne, no slouch, holed up his
temper like Mercury in fleeting
sentences and a swift pass to emotion.
Hard to read today, yes, but things change.
Osmium and rhenium - whoever heard of them?
-
Yet there they are too, numbers 75 and 76.
It's amazing - like the light from the windows
or this crazy room, how everything jumbled gets
named and assorted : eventual, gradual, at
one time or another. Soon enough. Selenium,
palladium and lutetium too.
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