Sunday, March 20, 2011

Counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . .

At Peter Cameron's Blog, "Counting the things that need to be counted," the July 14, 2010 entry contains a reflective poem entitled "Millenium" which meditates on the ten digits in stanzas whose lengths count them.  Here are the opening stanzas: 

     Millennium:    

     An artefact
     of ten fingers;

     an accident
     of dark age monks’
     calendar lore;

     a bonanza
     for marketing
     and preachers on
     television.

     Numbers beguile –
     they turn in quite
     another way from
     sun, moon, planets
     and wheeling stars.
. . .

A regular four-syllable line length adds another level of counting to Cameron's poem.  Go here for the final stanzas.    In a posting on mathematics and poetry, Cameron opines on ambiguity ( a topic I want to address in an upcoming posting);  meanwhile, here's a link to Cameron's view.

No comments:

Post a Comment