good poem

[Clark stewart]

an ode to a node on the road unknowed

ben iverson, (1985)

i was eager and young and searching for knowledge
where best to search? i enrolled in a college.
the professor was quick with integrated array,
statistics, and matrix, sets, rings, and boole

tote up the polygon, gross, net, and tare.
we extended the powers; extracted the square;
summed up the total for the integer where
the answers conflicted. the proof needs repair !

the lemma was euclid's, a solution it lacks.
the deeper one probed, more shaky the facts.
proofs became circular, all trivials drawn back.
small things ignored, then white becomes black.

new terms were invented, great discoveries allege.
new symbols and forms, and new fields would fledge.
to enhance the math to the zenith of knowledge.
it grew by the year, -- more grants to the college.

fields grew by the year, by the hour, the minute.
they passed a criteria, and exceeded their limit.
like zeno they sped, in search of the end.
each step we progressed, -- paradox to amend.

there's planck's constant, and pi, and lagrangian spots.
there are circles to square, and points smaller than (. . . . )s.
we find secant, and cosine, and hyperbolic function,
cube roots and quadratics, and lines that don't junction.

dirichlet divergent, convergent; roche limit;
rosser-iwaniec series; and a set with naught in it.
greek letters; and arabic; and sums analogues,
hieroglyphs, and squiggles, for the math catalogues.

all this we had tried to improve,
with a rigor one could not disprove.
to pythagoras i went,
on the triangle's descent,
and they formed a great mesh, interwove.

so this node was found,
and was on solid ground.
the professor said, "how do you use it?"
must it be of use,
like a christmas goose?
i go back to the books and peruse it.

the co-primality problem, for euler's great function
aliphatic chains discovered, for the toilers late unction,
manifold; global; lie; and abelian groups,
trajectories; and mills; and coordinates for troops.

singularities, discontinuous; stable diffeomorphisms;
ellipsoids; eccentrics; declensions; and schisms.
optics rectify photos, tip-tilt-swing and scale.
where will it end and real knowledge prevail?

distribution by parts, the area's bisection,,,
integration by parts, and rotated projection,
idempotents in rings, bifurcated resection,
trisection of angles. how much is conjection?

teichmullar modular groups, quasimeromorphic mappings,
oscillating exponentials, and hilbert space trappings,
degenerate differentials, and hopf bifurcation,
recombinant inversion, and catalyzed differentiation.

by leaps and by bounds, the knowledge did grow.
exponential growth, the knowledge did show.
projected and figured, calculated, hypothesized,
balanced and numbered, and new laws theorized.

so great seemed the knowledge, so profound seemed the proofs.
mathematicians invented ! could they never goof?
the answers seemed there, all prejudged and pat.
if paradox occurs they say "that's not where it is at."

where will it all end? what is the use?
where is rigor found? do we gain or lose?
i fumed and i fretted, and figured in vain.
could it be stated differently, to make sense in the main?

out of school to live, and to toil in world.
i thought that i should try and give it a whirl.
math applied not to nature. i thought it that it should.
i backed up to look, and to see if it could.

i went back to euclid, his lemma to prove,
with fractions and modules, and prime numbers remove.
found natural numbering from eratosthes' sieve
harmonic remainders, and did samekh conceive.

i went back to euclid, and to plato too,
to do what they did, and to know what they knew.
the four number declension;
an independent dimension.
in their books numbered "seven" all of it was true.

so i found two more nodes
on these unknown roads,
and off to the prof i flew.
" 'twas all done by gauss,
and fourier and strauss"
and he said, "what else is new?"

from "samekh" to "harmonics", 'tween business transactions,
"exact science of antiquity", and babylonian fractions.
the "elements" reviewed. sir thomas heath is imputed.
the arguments of fibonacci, are wholly refuted.

prime numbers still puzzle, pythagoras consulted.
the triangles intrigue, "beads" and "par numbers" resulted.
read books and the records, and found only zeros
about homer and thales, and other greek heroes.

pythagoras, socrates, and plato first knew math.
"twas plato and euclid which lighted the path.
archimedes, and nichomanchus, they carried the ball.
rome burned alexandria, 'cause the library did gall.

much was put back together, a millennium hence,
a bit here, a bit there. it didn't make sense.
one must go into detail to get at the base
of this whole mathematics, and give it its place.

'twas in euclid's books, papyrus burned in the fire.
the crusades didn't help, nor the spanish empire.
china burned all their books, put scholars to sword.
bishop diego de landa destroyed the mayan word.

the aztecs had knowledge, all destroyed and lost.
we say we are civilized, but such holocaust.
we know quite a bit, but is all of it true?
our conceit may trap us. we must take a new view.

there was a gleam of light, which was brighter than bright,
and i followed the path where it led.
the proofs were all there in the ellipse and the square.
and the prof found himself in dread.

he had long sought, a unified field for naught, in his hypothetical
thoughts.
however, nothing would yield.
the proofs i applied, using euclid my guide,
and there gleamed the grand unified field.

i still had to fight, the science journal's might.
then they published a left hand compliment.
they cannot forestall the truth with a wall,
which will foster scientific dissent.

quantum math's just an infant, there's so far to go.
if we nurse it along, we may see the whole show.
it is fluid and delicate, but can fleet in a trice,
the mathematicians are prideful, - their degrees at a price.

this book may preserve it, but not in our college
to be useful and helpful, and give us the knowledge,
of the way things should be, and not subject to whim.
for paradise lost, the secret's within.

we need sum and difference and prime numbers too,
along with multiplication to obtain answers true.
we need little more,
to rule the store,
of the true natural math which the ancients knew.

this leads into science in all its implications,
solves all of its problems; puts each in its station,
as part of the whole of which it is a part,
so, even in science, math's where we must start.

if we're going to last, quantum math shows the way,
that science works for us. we all have a say,
to search for a node,
on this unknown road.
much study is needed. we must it start today.

we've pillaged the land and poisoned the sea,
chemicals found galore in every specie.
we've spoiled most our wells, but conquered disease,
and we're buried in garbage, and drowned in feces.

the salmon are gone. the forests deplete.
the land surface is paved with hard concrete.
technologies run wild
like a wayward child
the future shows only defeat.

the nations are arming, to not be outclassed,
petroleums is limited. it's sure not to last.
many people are starving. it's hunger not fast.
the world still lives in fear of a nuclear blast.

so here's to a future which is bright and not gray.
the way it's intended, like a sunny day.
we will do all we can, avoid a mistake.
develop it well, our future's at stake.

* here this ode,

to the wayward node,

of math's own mode,

found as we strode,

on the unknown road,

comes to an end,

of this episode.


{reprinted from "pythagoras, and the quantum world, volume ii"

publisher - i.t.a.m. portland , ore.

- a division of delta spectrum research}


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