[…] denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
Here, in the final lines of the poem, the speaker comments on the terrible irony and tragedy surrounding Curie’s death. Rich realizes that much of Curie’s power—especially in retrospect—comes from both her scientific breakthroughs and the fact that she was a woman scientist during a time when women were not taken seriously as intellectual beings. Mostly, however, this quotation captures the tragic and very morosely ironic fact that it was Curie’s powerful work—her study of radioactive elements—that ultimately brought about her painful death.
[S]he must have known she suffered from radiation sickness […]
The speaker concludes that, despite her public denials of radiation sickness, Marie Curie must have realized that her tremendous work was killing her slowly. This must have been terrible for Curie to come to terms with, as her work was groundbreaking and revolutionary—yet it was also the root cause of her body’s destruction.
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil […]
The speaker describes in vivid and heartbreaking detail precisely how Marie Curie’s radiation poisoning physically destroyed her body. In her final years, Marie Curie had cataracts in her eyes and could not see to make scientific observations. Her fingertips were cracked, and her fingers could no longer close around a pencil: she could not write down her theories or ideas. And yet, in spite of these numerous physical ailments, Marie Curie denied until the very end that her body’s destruction was the result of her work with radioactive elements. This, the narrator concludes, is just one type of incredible strength and power that Curie exhibited. Her ability to stay true to her work and remain proud of her work until death is an incredible show of internal power, even if a misguided one.
[O]ne bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
The bottle described in this quotation contrasts the “science” of old with modern scientific explorations. Rich suggests that in the past, doctors created “tonics” which would cure all ailments—both mental and physical. The narrator uses this reflection to serve as a stark contrast to the high-caliber science that Marie Curie developed. This could be interpreted as contrasting men’s knowledge with women’s. Alternately, it could stress the difficulties of living in this world, and the need for both physical and psychic medicine to cope with it.
