Sometimes our focus on what is important -- in life, in love . . . as in mathematics -- starts with counting. This process is artfully expressed below in "Tally" by Romanian poet Lucian Blaga (1922-1985).
Tally by Lucien Blaga
I tally in the ancient way.
I count like the shepherd
how many white. how many black
--days, all year round.
I count the steps, of the beautiful one,
to the threshold of the door.
I count how many startsthere are
in the nest of the Mother Hen.
However many, the lot--I count,
smoke and illusions,
the whole day--count, count
roads and missed ways.
I count the stones on which
she crosses the ford, that beauty
and all the sins for which
hell will surely burn me.
Blaga's poem was translated from the Romanian by Brenda Walker and Stelian Apostolescu and is included in the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AKPeters/CRC Press, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Growney.
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