With bits of mathematics, a poem for a New Year

     Here -- containing bits of mathematical terminology --  is an excerpt from "A Poem for the New Year" by Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967).  

from    A Poem for the New Year     by Christopher Okigbo

          Where then are the roots, where the solution
          To life’s equation?

          The roots are nowhere
          There are no roots here
          Probe if you may
          From now until doomsday
          We have to think of ourselves as forever   

Zero-sum game -- in a poem by Okigbo

Game theory (with origins in the 1930s) was initially developed to analyze competitive decisions in which one individual does better at another's expense--"zero sum" games--and this term has become a part of everyday vocabulary; here we find it in a poem by Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967), a Nigerian poet.