Honor World Poetry Day on 3/21 with a Math Poem

On March 21 each year, UNESCO World Poetry Day! 

Browsing down through this blog will lead you to lots of poems to read to celebrate that special day. In addition, here's something new -- I offer below part of a fine poem that I recently found again in an old collection, Verse and Universe, (Edited by Kurt Brown, Milkweed Editions, 1998). 

from     Reasons for Numbers     by Lisel Mueller (1924-2020)

          1
          Because I exist

          2
          Because there must be a reason
          why I should cast a shadow

          3
          So that good can try to be better
          and become best
          and beginning grow into middle and end 

          4
          So the round earth can have its corners
          and the house will not fall down around me

          So the seasons will go on holding hands
          and the string quartet will play forever
             .  .  .

"Reasons for Numbers" appears in Mueller's collection, Alive Together (LSU Press, 1996), available here.   Lots more of Liesl Mueller's poems appear online here at the PoetryFoundation website -- and her poem "Curriculum Vitae" is found in this blog post from several years ago.