Scarlet fever infected the man
as a boy in Izhevskoye taking
most of his hearing / He turned
to books & spherical trigonometry
 
Before too long, he had carefully
worked out Tsiolkovsky’s Formula –
 
an elegant dynamite whooosh! of
math for prosecuting stelae up –
 
Next, he penned more to calculate the
escape velocities required to evacuate
and embark upon interplanetary trips
with rocket stages / one after another
after another slicing / double-barreled
zefir-parallels of wrapped, bundled,
sequenced tendons like train engines – spent –
 
dropping away; potsherds footage;
relayed ballets of his career steps;
his investigations ending when the
Bolshevists granted him a pension
 
He died in 1935 as someone let loose
of the other end of his kite string – spent –
 
dropping away; he exited the scene
but his formulas refused to instead
 
it gave birth to scores
of lady rocket ships –
one after another
after another