Poem from residency at Newton Institute for Mathematics in Cambridge

Surreal Möbius Elegy

Surreal numbers locate the real

global curve assigned to the shelf

for forty years to be lifted wholesale

by Einstein for his general theory

of relativity, his lights deflecting

off the rippling band of a mountain

lake, two sides to one story — band-

wagon I want to share with the lost,

with the obsessive of a pure discipline

who were laughed at, their theories

consigned to dark shelves; to locate

paths any error offers, to find a living

Minerva in plain song, the common

tongue — no display of dead wings.

Earlier, before this conversation, I had

been laughing over long-past and slightly

painful memories of a shake-the-foundations

poet, an American in Paris, an American

poet rowdy and disruptive around

ancient buildings he seemed to love —

a boat colliding with all other boats

on the narrow waters, resetting the word —

to be told he might in fact now be dead.

I changed tone and tact and turned one-

hundred-and-eighty degrees to reconnect.

I am shocked to find that he’s been

dead for months. Day turned end-to-end.

A ‘one-sided nonorientable surface’ —

endurance where the easier band

fails. And not having thought of this

poet for some time, the idea of him

had already manifested in yet an earlier

conversation with another party

earlier today. In this six-coloured life

I have painted myself out of focus.

Cold is finally coming, it’s said.

Encircled by surreals, I feel close,

so close, too close. And I saw

a bloodied bird’s wing on a path.

And I looked for words instead

            of numbers.


           John Kinsella