Tycho Dying

Having written four poems on the life of C17th Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, in the 1990's, and seen them dismissed in a review by Martin Stannard as 'biography by numbers', I later discovered that I had missed an important detail of the life. Tycho had a silver prosthetic nose having lost the one he was born with in a duel.

So I added a fifth poem, Tycho's Nose, in the next booklet.

Now I find that his death was quite remarkable, too, although one does have a choice of two stories. New research is suggesting that he was poisoned by mercury and even that the plot of Hamlet borrowed the story for the murder of Claudius. But the original version said that Tycho died of horrible complications after a banquet at which he was too polite to excuse himself from the table to go to the toilet.

This is the version I've used for a sixth Tycho poem, which here is fresh in its first draft and possibly in need of further work.

....

Tycho Dying

Ne frustra vixesse videar

Though he need not have observed etiquette
as closely as he had observed the stars,
he sat too long with plates of rare fowl meat
and sides of boar washed down with Rhenish wine.
A light white had accompanied hors d’oeuvres,
the one with the next course was just as sweet,
his manners too refined and delicate
to excuse himself briefly, or decline,

And make his way dignified from the room
to find relief in private. Each carafe
that followed the last tasted of heaven,
was too good to decline and politesse
insisted that he drink. He couldn’t laugh,
for he knew that such movement would threaten
the damburst he was trying hard to stem.
He disguised astronomical distress.

And when he hurried at last from the feast
to find the closet of his lavish host,
he found the ache and tension deep within
too much. His final days of dizziness and pain
were feverish and sickly as he lost
touch with consciousness at times, muttering
famous last words over again, at least,
that May I not seem to have lived in vain.