Here is Basil Patrick's microscope,
human as the things humans possess
too deeply, loving too much
those possessions that come to possess them.

How well he cared for these six lenses,
each spare eye snug in its metal case,
each case nested in its velvet socket
like a shotgun shell cast out of brass.

The lidded cylinders have kept their shine,
the fragile concavities of glass
their strength. The measure of each gaze
is etched under the maker's sign,

and on the slides, with their salmon-fine
leaves of spinal nerve and miner's lung,
Doctor Basil Patrick Hill has signed

his handiwork (his writing so small
that he might have been measuring out
valuable medicine, and not ink,

drop by blue Indian drop),
so that something of Basil Patrick
survives him in his instrument,

even though nothing of him remains
on these cold surfaces; not so much
as a single fingerprint ...