Poets Online Archive

Our reading is "A WORD ON STATISTICS" by Wislawa Szymborska (from View With a Grain of Sand) which looks rather playfully at numbers.

By the numbers. So much of our lives seem to go that way. The very page you are looking at is just a series of 0's and 1's in the computer's language. I like how Szymborska's voice is so confident in stating the facts here. The confidence of numbers.

Try starting a poem from numbers. A single number. A series of numbers (phone number, identification) numerical idioms (by the numbers, to get your number) whole, ordinal, rational numbers, the Biblical book of Numbers, dates, statistics... the possibilities are, well, infinite.

For more on all our prompts and other things poetic, check out the Poets Online blog.

was born first
in a family
that would eventually hold five
where only two
should have lived.
Zero children for this couple.

She was seventeen, he, eighteen, a couple
of teenagers, moved first
to a single room where we lived
playing family.
Two
fists. Five

fingers. Ten knuckles. Five
bruises. A couple
of belt welts always on my two-
year old legs. Hit first,
talk later in my family.
Day to day I lived.

One thousand, eight hundred, twenty-five days days, I lived
alone in fear until at age five
one more was born to the family
now four. A couple
of weeks passed before my mother's first
move to

him, two
steps at once, screaming, "I lived
to give you your first
breath." She screamed five
hours at a couple
of crying kids. Her family

ideas came from her family
where for too
long, a couple
of screaming maniacs lived
with five
sons, everyone smacking the little girl first.

The first anyone knew of my family
was when they hit #5 with her bottle two
days after she was born. She never lived with the couple.

I open mirrored wings
of the medicine cabinet
to see 3 me's -
and on the wall beside them
a childhood portrait posed -
the 4th. My old eyes
under a smooth brow
look back at me, blind
to the sights they are yet to see
that will put lines at the corners
of the 6 I look at from 3 sides.
As I tell the icons in the triptych
before me, "Age is just a number."

I have visited the beautiful caves of number,
whose first voice sounds the fathomless pulse
of nullity,
that primordial diapason,
terrible tone in the deepest
register of the divine
floating like a lethal portal
who awaits his prey in the hyacinth darkness.

Then, I have taken the stairway down
to One:
charcoal pencil, upright and reasonable,
the prudent father who preaches calmness
to his agitated posterity.

The successors of One lie,
imperishable as the chains of love
along endless logical escalators.

Chasing forever through caverns and shafts,
they tumble and fall, rise and play
from blackest red to furious violet,
adding and multiplying their kin
as they join to beget immortal families,
sharply disrupted by the sinister primes,
prim and purse-mouthed
mysterious custodians of Reimann's secret.

Here I could starve,
engorged by the surfeit of riches
that spill throughout the realm of Pythagoras;
and I wonder what sublime craftsman
with what subtle instrument
could etch these eternal, inscrutable harmonies.

She recalls again and again,
the same line, as a chant:
"Seven of seven this one is ... "
as she points to me, her
seventh child of ten.

Yes, the seventh child
of the seventh child and
from daughter came daughter
and there is that pride
she shares with all.

I saw this in his face;
Grandfather placing son
with son posing for photo;
fine generation portrayal.
This pride that came
forth while three were
set and yet, he was
wishing there were four;
just like before.

I hang pictures on my wall.
I place portraits on altars,
bordering tables and vanities.
With each nail driven or
in each frame, I place
a memory of importance;
offerings from one to another,
balancing heritage for
future reflection.

Numbers as arrows in a quiver
and in counting them I well up,
with that pride; the pride passed
down from mother, from father,
from family lineage, that's all.
Then again, this could be the value
of being the seventh
from the seventh.
I'll always remember that quote.

When one is nothing, there is nothing left.
We better zero in on such a thought
so negative; or, when we sing, we're caught
within the mesh of song that is bereft
of reason. Plus and minus form a cleft
dividing haves and have-not's (to be bought)
while weaving everything that can be caught
into the warp. But what about the weft?

Let's not "accentuate the positive."
Computer experts zero in on each:
the One and Nothing. They train us to live
in cyberspace - a mighty scary reach
within the world of take and give.
We have been thrown upon another beach
where Nothing matters, equal now - as sieve
through which to sift the single strands - they preach
to not "eliminate the negative,"
that one without the other is a leach,
destroying everything but the most triv-
ial. This newer practice we must teach!

In American-flag colors,
"Validate Your Highway 50 Survival Kit Map Here"
and sing the anthem loud and clear...
United the numbers we stand,
divided the numbers we fear.

Move to Route 66 - the sunset strip!
In your lemon-canary mustang '64
singin' and laughin' and groovin' galore
Together we play... apart we moor.

Numbered Blue Highways or Red Byways,
Where to roam next?
Hop on 80, Blue 80 for cross-country's best!
Share we explore... hoard we regress.

Now off the ground and into the air
with a "Caldwell Ground Cessna 66417 flair
requesting taxi active"
Response, "Taxi active runway 27...give!
Full throttle, rudder control,
55 r.p.m.'s and yoke back.
(Check to step on that watermelon seed!)
Romancing to level flight
(some sorrowful sigh)
ground to runway track #4.

Around and around, up and/or down.
In, out or about we do go.
Companion your travels,
numbers will show
No longer lonely,
Wait, wait, pick up
your ONE - 1 - ONE jeweled aquamarine necklace
from near the nosewheel before we re-fuel,
and remember how your other shooting-star necklace
flew off under the wing?
As a wrap, fasten the trinity ties
to secure your plane.

Jane Conforti

Census Taking in the Year 2000

53 questions
need 53 answers
By the first of April
By April first
And so I comply

One sixth of the weight of our
5-year- old pillow is comprised
of dust mite droppings
One cockroach has 8 hearts
15 years is the average life
expectancy of a termite queen

Living by the numbers is
Not easy without you,
my mathematician.
The universe feels the void.
Now, I have told you
Everything you will ever
need to know.

Of late he's whipping through the latex gloves
All that scrubbing all those fortissimo cleaners
So far no painful cracks just some raw knuckles
Though not the four standard ones it's a seasonal cleaning
A season of change a mid-life experience not a crisis
Middle age shrink wraps crises doesn't do them in
Just packages them for overnight express

You got till sunset to clear outta Dodge cause I'm
Too wise too mean too experienced too damn old for crises
Lay some stress on me Baby cause I'll huff and I'll puff
And I'll blow your whole damn house down and out to sea
Before you've got time to cut a tinker's fart in a crowded elevator

What he means is he's so tough
He doesn't know how tough
Like the little toy in Cracker Jacks
Is the fifth decade of surprise

Gold was the promise
when a penny was a purchase
or a pitch close to the wall
A pack of vended Camels
carried two cents change
only twenty-three more needed
for three features and 25 cartoons

Two cents plain
appealing mainly to the old
Add a penny's worth of chocolate
a spritz of milk and voilá
the best egg creams in the Bronx

Gold was Old
20 to a pack, two cent's loose
where the streets were paved with silver
rolled into a ball -- priceless as pure gold
and the word heard was Thunderbird
when the only bad copper
was a "dirty copper." City joke.
Heads down -- bad luck
Fun's over

Young cans kicked away
like obverse pennies of yesterday
hoping for the reverse
rolling on the edge
landing wrong side down again
somewhere in the gutter
like worthless coins that
pave the street today

Copper, gold, and silver
bear different reflections when
ceding to the sun or memory's whim

4 bodies sit before me.
2 seem to surround me, 2 in front.
I wait patiently for each sentence to be over.
I wait for this 1 half hour to end.
3 minutes later, it seems more like 3 years have passed me by.
To make excuses is childish.
To kiss them is tragic.
To be patient may be just enough to earn 1 more half hour,
4 days later if I hurry.
To be judged or to be a Princess on display?
1 more time I will think all about it.
After I thank them for their precious time.

It all started when I was two,
Before I knew
That she did it all for me.
And then came the move,
When I turned three,
His name was Jim and he
Was real tall.
Six-five to be exact.
He would have to duck his head
Beneath the crystal chandelier
In the dining room,
But sometimes he forgot and,
I guess he forgot other things
Like diamond rings,
And was always late,
So she did it again when I turned eight.
Leaving behind the bird feeder,
And the dog house,
Though we never had a dog,
And worked two jobs
To pay the bills.
And told me I could be anything
I wished to be,
As she changed from one hat
To the next,
Smiling.
Doing it all for me.

sixty minutes an hour
eight hours a day
seven days a week
four weeks a month
twelve months a year
seventy years a lifetime
to forget that one sixty second
good-bye kiss from
your two lips my love

Poets Online Archive

NUMBERS