They belong dead, but we resurrect them

in silver nitrate and the feverish flicker

that dreams beat against the inner eye,

the yearning golem, his disdainful mate,

the alchemist as eccentric and involute

as his flasks and alembics proposing

a toast in gin like white mercury,

the shadow stitchery of Paracelsus

and Prometheus' fire. Like cornerstone

shades, they seep beneath our century,

the lyke-wake wedding, lightning-engraved,

the dragonseed breeding of current and bone

that gendered only ghosts, replicant echoes

in red earth and Tesla coils, a shy chemist

who once saved me a sunflower to pluck.

To all the ways we strive and multiply,

to creation, to the divine and monstrous,

the scientific world and all its hauntings

black and white: l'chaim. It is our only . . .