Vavilov

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, 1887-1943

‘Since you will almost certainly survive,

I ask you to remember that my name

is Vavilov, Academician.  My

ambition was to feed the world.  I gathered

seeds from each corner of the earth, and stored them’,

he told the girl.  ‘Don’t cry’.  They shuffled forward

in one long line, across the dirty snow.

‘I loved those seeds.  I wouldn’t emigrate.

Swift said, he who can make two ears of corn

grow in a spot where only one grew previously

will do more good than all the politicians.

I thought, still think, no one need die of hunger’,

he said.  Throughout the siege of Leningrad

his colleagues saved those seeds.  An asteroid,

a glacier, and a crater of the moon

are named for him.  He died at fifty-five,

emaciated.  The weeping girl survived.