I'm not supposed to be online, these are my sacred night time writing hours, but in the spirit that there are no "shoulds" or "musn'ts", I had to blog now. I've been writing and I took a break, Internet off, and turned to one of my favourite poets, Wislawa Szymborska, to her new and collected poems 1957-1997. For those of you who aren't familiar, ohmigod she's amazing! And yes, she won the Nobel prize for Lit in 1996. She was a breath of fresh, fresh air for me, someone who thought poetry had to be very "worthy". I love her poems, her wit, her language. And now, oh joy of joys, a Wislawa poem about maths! About Pi, the mathematical constant, no less. What could make me happier? Not much. Here is a joyous excerpt:
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn't stop at the page's edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief - a mouse tail, a pigtail - is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star's ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
What I love is her imagination - seeing all those things, a phone number, shirt size, hip measurement, in the endless stream of Pi's digits. You can read the whole poem here, but I recommend you buy this book. She never fails to inspire, amuse, astonish. She's made my day. Again.
