Here is a poem from each of my collections (occasionally exchanged), and links to some poems and readings that have been published online since.
The Wax Argument
— René Descartes (1641) Meditations on First Philosophy, Second Meditation
Cool on my palm is one petite
boule. It’s pale yellow, smooth, discrete.
I hold it underneath my nose
and sniff — is that a hint of rose?
I touch it with my tongue. It’s sweet,
still honeyed from the hive, a treat
to contemplate, if not to eat.
So many ways my body knows
this piece of wax.
As I approach the fireside heat,
these sense impressions all retreat
or shift. Even its shape now goes —
and yet its essence, I suppose,
persists. A concept, a conceit,
this piece of wax.
(from ‘The Wax Argument & Other Thought Experiments’)
Origami
This is art but not sculpture
so much as mathematics.
A sheet of paper, cut square,
offers theorems about
its latent third dimension:
that it contains a dragon-
fly, or a sailboat. Every
fold is a step of a proof.
Therefore, a new theorem
concerning you, lovely girl,
sitting at your bedroom desk,
so absorbed in your handiwork:
that you are both an artist
and a mathematician
in the making. Every
fold is a step of a proof.
(from ‘The Windmill Proof’)
Given Name
Too many in my year at school and one
I couldn’t stand. Too readily misspelled.
Of course, I learned to live with it, going by
the short form she preferred not to use.
But only since it started to slip her mind
have I held close this common given name:
imagining her sounding it against
alternatives, respecting her concern
to mark the equal bloodline from her father,
and hearing in it the voice of the young woman
who called me from my sleep those school-day mornings.
(from ‘Pattern Beyond Chance’)
Unicyclist
He certainly turns some heads this boy,
slaloming through the crowd,
rodeoing over kerbs,
weighing the probabilities of balance
and defying them
on his reinvented wheel.
(from ‘The Probabilities of Balance’)
Epitaphs, The Friday Poem, 2 September 2022
Stephen Payne 