“Copernicus,” by Brooks Haxton

“Copernicus,” a poem by MFA faculty member Brooks Haxton, was recently featured in Waxwing. Read an excerpt below:

Copernicus

…My housekeeper when I was old was banished
by my friend, the new Prince-Bishop,
who alleged that she was more to me than I
would say. Devotion, meanwhile, to the loving
mind of God made unacceptable the nest
of calibrated rings with Earth at the center
and a tiny sun in orbit. This, the science
of a thousand years, I took in hand
to measure by its rule my thought: to set
aside the old, ungainly universe, and leave
God’s body true to its own motion naked.

You can read the rest of this and an additional poem by Haxton here: http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue21/19_Haxton-Copernicus.php