True, between faces almost any number
Might come in handy, and One is always real;
But which could any face call good, for calling
Infinity a number does not make it one.
The complete poem is posted here.
"Numbers and Faces" is also the title of a small anthology of poems, published in 2001 and containing Auden's poem, that I collected and edited for the Humanistic Mathematics Network. The anthology has been out of print for many years but a file with its mathy poems is available online here.
The Humanistic Mathematics Network (started around 1987 by Alvin White) had a Newsletter and then a Journal but these paper publications faded away around 2004. The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics emerged in 2011 to fill the void. Recently I have learned from JHM editor Gizem Karaali, that an online archive of the prior publications is available here. (Using the search box, I was able to find several of my own years-ago articles, including one from 1994 entitled "Mathematics in Literature and Poetry.")
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