Stories of Quadrilaterals

     Sometimes I have time to browse my shelves and rediscover old favorites.  Several of this blog's much-read poems have come from Scottish author Brian McCabe (Find blog search results at this link) -- and below I offer the first part of McCabe's two-part poem ("Two Quadrilaterals") entitled "The Restless Square."

Two Quadrilaterals    by Brian McCabe

     Part 1.  The Restless Square  

          There was a square who yearned
          to become something else.

          It stretched its legs to mimic
          an elegant rectangle but
          lost its balance, leaned over
          in a perilous parallelogram.    

          It shrank to a rickety rhombus
          before it sprang back into shape
          four equal sides and four
          quite predictable right angles.

          With a supreme effort then
          it held its breath, drew in its corners,
          swelled into a trembling circle,
          stretched into an elegant ellipse

          but the effort was so exhausting
          that it fell asleep.  When it awoke:
          four equal sides and four
          quite predictable right angles.

          Then the square met another square
          who was having a meeting for squares
          all wishing to become something else
          and together they found a way.

          There was a cube who yearned
          to become something else . . .

McCabe's poem, "Two Quadrilaterals" is found in his collection Zero (Polygon, 2009; Birlinn, Ltd).  The second part has the title, "The Unemployed Parallelogram."  My review of McCabe's Zero is available online here.