Einstein’s Mother
Was he mute a while,
or all tears. Did he raise
his hands to his ears so
he could scream scream
scream. Did he eat only
with his fists. Did he eat
as if something inside of him
would never be fed. Did he
arch his back and hammer
his heels into the floor
the minute there was
something he sought.
And did you feel yourself
caught there, wanting
to let go, to run, to
be called back to wherever
your two tangled souls
had sprung from. Did you ever
feel as though something
were rising up inside you.
A fire-white ghost. Did you
feel pity. And for whom.
Copyright © 2020 by Tracy K. Smith. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 18, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
“I've often heard that Albert Einstein struggled as a child. He came to language late, was unsuited to the classroom setting. And yet, in the narrative of Einstein's life, his genius is often tied to the difficult or confounding features of his child self. My poem bears witness to the occasional challenges of motherhood. Sometimes narratives like Einstein's offer me hope; more often, I fear they urge me toward a kind of magical, and potentially counterproductive, thinking.”
—Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith is the author of Such Color: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2021), Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011), winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Duende (Graywolf Press, 2007), which received the 2006 James Laughlin Award. Smith served as the poet laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019.