his sisters, his beloved and anxious wife Emma, his children, his fellow evolutionist Alfred Russel Wallace, and even (of course) an orangutan in London Zoo: "She took bread from a visitor, tilting her brow/at the keeper, to see whether this was allowed." The emotional centre of the book is the Darwins' stoic marriage, shaken by the divisive problem of Emma's religious belief, and torn by the terrible death of their 10-year-old daughter Annie. This is dramatised in a series of bleak and painful poems, most notably "The Devil's Chaplain", in which hopes of a Christian heaven are set against relentless phrases from chapter four of The Origin - "no purpose, no design . . . blind, pitiless/indifference".
from The Guardian: Giving to a blind man eyes
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