Dancing with Archimedes
Archimedes’ statements are written on glass,
Squeaky violin and a keyboard for chalk.
The man with the earring petitions the class,
“How is it possible?”, in the language of Bach.
The first of eighteen lists, without square division,
The number called i as the elegant root
And obvious base of a true counting system,
Whose consistence and ease make assumptions all moot.
The glow of projection, the matte of the walls,
Hold our minds like the gracenotes produced by his hands.
His pupils stare back him, silence through all,
But I sway in time with it: I understand.
How could the ancient Greeks know this, he asks,
When comforting modern-day sense disagrees?
For all of the rest of these tenets hold fast
But this first recommends that our worldview we weed!
For our common perception is over-contrived
If we start as we still, and have always, begun.
It cannot be fathomed how they could have arrived
At the knowledge that theta, our i, usurps One!
Even more basic than integer maths,
Without the dimension the Complex requires,
Simpler than integrals, topologists’ paths:
The atom of counting is i, and no higher!
The look from his eyes and the sounds from his chalk
Writing red, indirectly, on ceramic held firm
Flow through me, entice me, excite me to waltz,
To move through the class at this thing that I’ve learned!
I never had questioned, I’d always believed,
That counting and thinking began as they’d told.
What else must be false, what else must I heave?
Proven wrong by ideas both true and quite old?
Sweater pushed up on his arms for convenience,
He declares that this truth simply has to be false;
For it greatly distresses the learned elite,
Who worship ideas that long lost their pulse.
As I’m shifting my hips to the beat of the truth,
He stares over his shoulder with clear diaspproval
At this heretic’s foxtrot, this heathenized youth,
But contentment propels me, at dogma’s removal.
Alone in acceptance of new revelation
I survey the room and my classmates within.
They’re unsure which to side with: Their math-priest’s dictation,
Or the simple symphonics that flow through their skin.
They can make up their minds on their own, I decide,
For I cannot convince them they’re faithful to lies.
But the wind blows, and mirrors my two-step, outside,
As the sun, the projector that’s opened my eyes.
