Without Number

Most people think it’s rather sad
that all I talk about is pi
or lists of unknowns labelled x
that leave them totally in the dark.
I tell them that they’ve missed the point;
there’s so much in a number

but it leaves them feeling number
than a pallid victim of S.A.D.
as I recite each decimal point
of glorious transcendental pi.
I’ve heard it was intoned by Jeanne d’Arc,
part of an attempt to hex

the bloody English as they spread ex-
cessive rumours, not to say a number
of vile lies about her and the dark
art of differentials, a sad
and clumsy ploy, as obvious as apple pie.
I digress, perhaps, but you get the point.

Returning to my principal point:
what is the volume of six eggs?
You can’t reply and not use pi
although there’s probably any number
of children who can solve this for you – sad,
I know – even blindfold in the dark.

And do you know why night is dark?
Just think. If heaven flashed its pin point
stars in all directions, we should be sad-
dled with white-out skies, ex-
tremely hot, and our number
up before you could yell: pi!

but a bounded cosmos means we get pie-
eyed at night and make love in the dark
far below that critical number
on the thermometer at which point
we are likely to suffer total ex-
tinction and that would be sad.

The point I’m making is that pi
shouldn’t be exiled to the dark,
to sad, sad thoughts without number.