Mathematical poetry or Poetic mathematics?

Mathematical poetry or Poetic mathematics?
by Gerald L. Kaufman (1948)

Geo-Metric Verse

Our yesterdays

"Our yesterdays
Are like a lonely and a ruined land
Wherein a breeze of recollection sighs--
A fading land to which is no return."

HENRY ABBEY, "Invocation to the Sun"

Another day, another bomb

Yesterday another half a dozen bombs went off across the city.
We're still counting the dead
Fitting together the jigsaw pieces of flesh,
Hosing down the red streets
Helped by the heavens which opened up
To add to the usual official chaos.

The news-hyenas arrived in packs
Drawn by the stench of blood and meat
To a feast of breaking news.

Nothing was new.
Nameless, faceless men giving succour
Without fanfare
To others equally anonymous.
A picture a bomb-weary city has grown used to.

For countless households
The long night has just begun.

The Nests of Nandigram

Is it my imagination
Or are there far fewer birds singing ?
What dawn do they mutely await
Through the long night of terror ?
Silence speaks of pervasive fear
And of the loss of ancestral nests.

The protector has taken an axe to the trees.
Trees fall; the earth shakes.
Raucous cries of dispossession supplant birdsong
As the khaki-clad hunters pot sitting ducks
While Zeus' swans feast on Leda's flesh.

Rejoice, my countrymen, for the prophecy has come true
-The state has indeed withered away.

Autumn Harvest

Words, once obedient servants
Now claim suzerainty over ideas
The age of meaningful verse has yielded
To gobbledygook.

Poetry, a grey mist half-understood
Through which I stumble blindly
A mirage I chase through the sands...

The wells of creativity run dry
Neither outpourings of emotion nor tender murmurs
Mere craftsmanship remains
Lines dolled up in tawdry baubles
Literary whores, soliciting passing readers
Fireflies, impotent
In the face of the darkness within.

The autumn harvest of verbosity is ripe
For the scythe of the Grim Reaper

Song of a Tuneless Nightingale

In the Garden of Verse trills many a nightingale
Of the advent of spring
Fertile, bountiful, pregnant.
Of clouds turgid with the fluid of life,
Of rain, and of lush green meadows,
Of starlit, silvery nights

Silenced are the mutterings
Of those in whose veins courses
The brutal, parched thirst
And ravenous hunger
Of searing summer unquenched.
Their deep, frightening voices
Out of place in Eden.

Autumn permitted to weep
Only in the silent shedding of leaves
And winter mute, frozen
By the chilling demise of the senses.

Here may be sung
Only chaste, bejewelled verse
Set to uplifting metre.
Shut are the doors
To tuneless wolf whistles
Prurient, irreverent, defiant
Yet far more spontaneous and heartfelt...

A patch of Paradise

Alone on a far shore
Savouring the limpid turquoise blue of the ocean
The soft, clean golden sand
The solitude, and the heaven-sent silence
Punctuated only by the lullaby of the waves
My own small patch of Paradise
Without the strings attached
An isle of repose, of calm
All the more beautiful for its impermanence
My personal Eden
Sans apple, sans Eve, sans Lucifer...sans God himself
For even He would be a distraction
Let me cherish it while I may
For the world will intrude all too soon...

Window

I sit by the window looking out
And see myself reflected
Outside the glass looking in
Reality and illusion facing off
Or is the window the only reality
Separating two ghosts
Or perhaps imprisoning just the schizoid singularity
Of a self-absorbed existence?
A Rowlingesque Hogwartian mirror showing
My heart's deepest desire - myself -
A true inheritor
To the mantle of Narcissus

A long way to twilight

It's a long way to twilight
With the day refusing to die
The fiercely beating sun digging his heels in,
Dogged in retreat
The stars and the moon bashfully hidden
Behind the veil of his blazing glare

The sky cloudless, no impediment
To the spears of his incandescent beams
The road, barren, tree-less
Only the shrubbery of razor-sharp pebbles underfoot
Kin to the cacti
Without even the saving grace
Of their greenness

It's a long way to twilight
And the day refuses to die...

The pen goes dry

I long for your cooling embrace
After the relentless flames of the world
Give me repose, Mother Ganga, for I come to your arms as ashes
Increasingly irksome was the mortal garb
And the silken ties too tight


The skein has unravelled
And I am one with the sky and the stars
Those symbols of eternity;
Have left behind mortal playmates, fickle emotions...

My pen sobs
And I lack the courage to speak the truth
To let it know
That it has finally run dry, and I, empty
Words fail me, like the 'Brahmastra', at vital moments
Perhaps I, too, carry the curse
Of some Bhargava ?

A free verse translation of my Marathi ghazal.

Manhood

Every morning the headlines flaunt
The rising graph of our hallowed, ancient culture
And provide statistical confirmation
Of the collective manhood
Of a bogey full of passengers;
Of the protectors' unshakeable indolence
Of unabashed justifications, of corrupted lives


Soon, far too soon
The dust settles
The reporters move on
Then is declared the official price
Of outraged modesty
Then stands tall and proud the maze
Of hospitals, police stations,
Blind, deaf, impotent courts
In which are condemned wounds
Never to heal
And the wounded
To endure the curse of life

I click my tongue in empathy
Sipping my steaming cup of tea
Then, turning the page, focus on
The alluring barely-clads of Page Three...


A free translation of my Marathi poem 'Purushaarth'.