This poem by Hanns Cibulka (1920 - 2004) -- translated from the German by Ewald Osers -- is collected in the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics, edited by Sarah Glaz and me (A K Peters, 2008).
Mathematics by Hanns Cibulka (trans. Ewald Osers)
And the angel of numbers
is flying
from 1 to 2...
—Rafael Alberti
The numbers
on our childhood slates
form ranks
when the angel with the integral
enters the room
He comes with e to the power -x
with the π-th root of n
his tunic
is covered
with the snow of infinity
Angel of intuition
with your letters
we illumine
n-dimensional spaces
in the universe
Gone
the Euclidean tranquility
of the world
A complete table of Contents for the anthology, Strange Attractors, may be found here.
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I keep reading and re-reading this: He comes with
ReplyDeletewith
his tunic
Is the second "with" correct?
Thanks for your careful reading and comment. Indeed, both uses of the word "with" are correct -- but I have left out some mathematical symbols . .. I will make a correction soon!
DeleteOne more thing to add: in the original poem, the phrases
Deletee to the power -x
and
the π-th root of n
are given as formulas with an exponent and a radical sign but my blog did not want to let me use that notation today.