End of the experiment

It was to be expected, wasn't it?
Isn't this how all experiments end?
At least the controlled ones,
The scientific ones,
The "proper" ones;
Where the experimenter has prepared
The specimens with care,
Divided them neatly into two groups —
Control group and experimental group —
And carefully tested for one variable?

All such experiments end one way,
Regardless of what happens
To the hypothesis:
Disproven or not yet disproven.
(As scientists incessantly remind us:
Good hypotheses are falsifiable,
And hence can never truly be proven.
Their best hope
Is constant fortification
By surviving several experiments.)

The way all experiments end
Is at the laboratory sink.
Where flask, pipette and petri dish
Are cleansed of the last vestige
Of all specimens —
Control or experimental.

The experimenter, being well-pleased
With data so meticulously gathered,
Is expected to have scant respect
For his now-used, now-worthless specimens.
It's not a moral question for him,
It's simply following protocol.
For this is how experiments must end:
"Please wash all equipment when you're done."

A Curve Closed

Her short cropped hair admitting few curves
Like her equations, a trove of frugal beauty.
Of surfaces, toruses, and closed curves--
Real things in an imagined topology.

A geodesic is the shortest curve
Amongst all like it:
The laconic prefect of an unruly class
That stands and speaks for them all.
What it lacks in length,
It makes up for in weight --
Though not in the literal sense;
Euclid won't allow it!
But it carries the weight
Of other wanton, wasteful curves.
It speaks for all, despite being the shortest.

Thus it was with the curve of her life
Brief though it was --
How illogically, unfairly, painfully short!
It carried the weight
Of not just her ambitions
Across continents, cultures, classrooms, conferences;
But also those of more meandering life-curves.
That accomplished not so much,
Longer and loopier though they were.

And though I can't speak for her,
Ungifted, untutored, unprepared and unskilled as I am,
She speaks for me
Through her scintillating work.
The geodesic of her life,
Though it closed too soon,
Is yet the weightiest one of all.

For Maryam Mirzakhani

August 2017