When you ground the lenses and the moons swam free
From that great wanderer; when the apple shone
Like a sea-shell through your prism, voyager;
When, dancing in pure flame, the Roman mercy,
Your doctrines blew like ashes from your bones;
Did you think, for an instant, past the numerals
Jellied in Latin like bacteria in broth,
Snatched for by holy Europe like a sign?
Past sombre tables inched out with the lives
Forgotten or clapped for by the wigged Societies?
You guessed this? The earth’s face altering with iron,
The smoke ranged like a wall against the day?
The equations metamorphose into use: the free
Drag their slight bones from tenements to vote
To die with their children in your factories.
Man is born in chains; yet everywhere we see him dead.
On your earth they sell nothing but our lives.
You knew that what you died for was our deaths?
You learned, those years, that all men wish is Trade?
It was you who understood; it is we who change.
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