Poetry from Ursula Le Guin

     Well-known and beloved writer Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018) died last month -- at the age of 88.  Although best known for her fiction, Le Guin also was a poet -- and I include samples of her poetic work (and links) below.
     An adaptation for the stage of Le Guin's novel, The Lathe of Heaven, is currently in performance (until March 11) at the Spooky Action Theater as part of Washington, DC's Women's Voices Theater Festival.  I had the privilege of attending last Saturday's performance -- and liked it a lot.
     Le Guin's poetry is not substantially mathematical, but I include a couple of verses below that each contain a mathy term or two . . .

A palindrome I do not want to write

The mournful palindromedary,

symmetrical and arbitrary,

cannot desert the desert, cannot roam,

plods back and forth but never reaches home.

Mental boustrophedon is scary,

I do not want to write a palindrome.

-- UKL, February 2009

The verse above is found here along with links to other Le Guin poems.  And, below, a brief poem found in  Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness,  (Ace Science Fiction, 2000, page 233).

       Light is the left hand of darkness
       and darkness the right hand of light.
       Two are one, life and death, lying
       together like lovers in kemmer,
       like hands joined together,
       like the end and the way.