Geometry in New York City

     As I grew up on a farm, mathematics -- with planting depth-and-distance measurements, with counting of animals and fenceposts, with angles of tree-branches, and many other basics -- was important background knowledge.  As I grew older and experienced more city-time, the mathematics I encountered was more complex.  When I visit Pittsburgh or San Francisco or New York City or . . . I feel the geometry that surrounds me.  And I was reminded of those geometric feelings when I recently encountered this poem:

Mayakovsky in New York:  A Found Poem     by Annie Dillard

     New York: You take a train that rips through versts.
     It feels as if the trains were running over your ears.

     For many hours the train flies along the banks
     of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops,
     passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
     and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.

     Bridges leap over the train with increasing frequency.

     At each stop an additional story grows
     onto the roofs. Finally houses with squares
     and dots of windows rise up. No matter how far
     you throw back your head, there are no tops.

     Time and again, the telegraph poles are made
     of wood. Maybe it only seems that way.

     In the narrow canyons between the buildings, a sort   
     of adventurer-wind howls and runs away
     along the versts of the ten avenues. Below
     flows a solid human mass. Only their yellow
     waterproof slickers hiss like samovars and blaze.
     The construction rises and with it the crane, as if
     the building were being lifted up off the ground
     by its pigtail. It is hard to take it seriously.

     The buildings are glowing with electricity; their evenly
     cut-out windows are like a stencil. Under awnings
     the papers lie in heaps, delivered by trucks.
     It is impossible to tear oneself away from this spectacle.

     At midnight those leaving the theaters drink a last soda.
     Puddles of rain stand cooling. Poor people scavenge
     bones. In all directions is a labyrinth of trains
     suffocated by vaults. There is no hope, your eyes
     are not accustomed to seeing such things.

     They are starting to evolve an American gait out
     of the cautious steps of the Indians on the paths of empty
     Manhattan. Maybe it only seems that way.

Here is a link to Wikipedia information about Russian poet Vladamir Mayakovsky, and this link leads to the website of Annie Dillard.