OUR LADY OF THE LAB

OUR LADY OF THE LAB

Mantled in vitriol blue upon a slab

of glass she stands – Our Lady of the Lab.

Amid the strange array of vials and jars

of rainbow liquids, crystal powdered stars,

no whit a stranger to synthetic skies

where lightning sparkles, gaseous clouds arise

from test-tube, trough, from glass and illium.

She sheds a fragrance sicut lilium[1]

despite hydrogen sulphide.  To her care

consign the young Curies[2] who dabble there

lest, greatest of all dangers, they should meet

the serpent acid-fanged beneath her feet.

Sister Maryanna

America.  31 May 1941

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[1] like that (the fragrance) of lilies

[2] Marie Curie (1867-1934) and her husband Pierre, both physicists, while looking for elements that gave off X-rays, were responsible for isolating radium.  They shared the Nobel prize for physics for 1903.  Continuing her research even after Pierre’s death in 1906, Marie, now professor of physics at the University of Paris, continued her research and received   her second  Nobel prize in 1911.