Testing on Steel and Glass

By Carl Rakosi 1903–2004 Carl Rakosi

“If you open the brain

from whence sprang Solomon and Aristotle

and separate the lips

in the fissure of Sylvius

a triangle of cortex

will appear.

This is the Island of Reil.”

Well put, anatomist.

We are all careful, men of earth

(a blind man can sense a post).

Thus Newton pondered on falling apples

and a Mixtec carved a humanist in jaguar bone.

“How happy I was,”

wrote the scientist after a long illness,

“when once again

I had something to investigate.”

Carl Rakosi, “Testing on Steel and Glass” from The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (Orono: The National Poetry Foundation, 1986). Used with the permission of Marilyn J. Kane.

Source: The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi (National Poetry Foundation, 1986)

Biography

The son of German Jewish parents, Carl Rakosi was born in Berlin in 1903, moving soon to Hungary following his parents’ separation in 1904. Immigrating with his father and stepmother to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1910, he eventually graduated from the University of Wisconsin (where he edited the literary magazine) and later earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. Rakosi’s involvement in the . . .

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