“Two and two makes five
for large enough values of two.”
A seagull said this yesterday.
Do you think it could be true?
My Tutor the Seagull
Reply
Category Archives: Poems by Alan Reynolds
Non-U Socialising
‘I am old,’ said the Durac, ‘and riddled with charm,
so I live all alone in The South.’
The Slynog replied, with a sound like it cried
though it moved not a part of its mouth,
‘You are eusocial, Eugene, eugenically broke;
you give over too early to wrath.
You keep seeking the reeking unriddling of All
though you look for it only in Math.’
‘Am I truly eusocial?’ the Durac essayed.
It pleasured him slightly to toy
with the sensible Slynog whose ‘sensitive’ seethed
under bedclothes of logic to buoy
up a billow of bubbles of misapplied thought.
‘I’d have thought that a taut skein of cells
in the skin or the blood were eusocial while I,
like an unaxoned neuron or bells
unadorned by book, candle or swung-about cat,
am waiting alone though we meet.’
The Slynog, who nurtured its own hermit past
with plunges through bloodstreams to eat,
said the Durac was right, and remarked that the light
was marvelous this time of the day.
Then they parted imparted with illusions they’d shared
a moment. Each went on its way.
Orthogonal
I read until the math eludes my grasp.
I give up, do not go on to page two.
Page one has brought me rationals that rasp
away until their complements shine through
sufficiently to persuade me it is is true
that angles must be right to be correct.
I draw some, making straight lines intersect,
and on these axes try to classify
the books I’ve read, although when I inspect
my groups they are irrational, like pi.
Denial in The Line’s Din
A one dimensional line evolves its point
to two, a pair that like dilemma horns
go separate ways before one can anoint
either horn as better. Both are thorns
that trouble staunch denial, as they’re bound
to do, uniting, by their binding, lots
of intervening space the dye has cast
a pall upon. The space itself is sound,
although unasked for by the man God wots.
The man sees both points threatening the past
existence he’s been used to all these years.
The line the points draw leads him into fears.
What is this dye that our traveller wants to stow
(reversing “wots”) away so that its hue
can’t cry explosively and splash and glow
so brightly that it forces him to view
some to-him-unfamiliar forms of life?
What is the point escaping from the din
to which he is accustomed? Just a dot?
A dot of dotage, small in size but rife
for an expansive future, brings a grin
to Wot’s not-yet old face. He says he’ll rot
rat cheer and thanks the points not very much
for spreading out to where they’re hard to touch.
Applauding Your Taking the Pi’s
Applause, sir, for your fine defense of fie.
With your complexes one can simplify
raw algebra to what I analyse
as your take on geometric squares of pi’s.
Does ‘complex’ stand in for ‘imaginary’?
Like a miner mourning death in his canary
with something of self-interest in his tears,
I tread with trepidation on my fears
that should I weigh in with the kitchen sink
asserting that these ‘complex’ numbers link
entirely different parts of higher maths,
you’d ask me how, and I’d fall on my aths.
Probably Probability
One out of six is the chance I’ll get a six
each time I dice with chance and throw a die.
And where New Math stays stubbornly alive
the chance I’ll throw a five is one in five.
Dispensing with Bird Calls
When you hunt a duck and track it with your Browning,
second-order exponential smoothing
can help you aim, and ups your chance of downing
Donald. If you find a pressed duck soothing
but are depressed to watch your bird shot drowning,
try leading with this mathy jazzy new thing
that weights most recent sightings of his beak
more than where he was on average, or last week.
Large-Unit Maths
There is no unit larger than a slew
which explains why there are never ever two.
Two slew would be too many, while a few
slews are an oxymoron, or a clue
to numbers that escape the Argand plane.
I am sure this poem’s next reader will explain.
Earth Tourist 