Calculations: A Love Poem

Gary Fincke

The billionth digit of pi is 9,

The last month without a full moon,

February, 1865 --

This morning I am making a list

Of the last lines of parables（比喻，预言）

About the work of numbers, about

Calculations, marking the speed

With which blood travels, as if three feet

Per second were like the blessings

On the late workers in a vineyard

Or a son just home from living with swine.

Someone continues the division

That computes the decimals of pi --

He is telling a story, numerals

Spilling out toward infinity,

The counting a language, a life

Beyond this one, as difficult

To believe as the number of hours

We've slept together, darkness returning

And vanishing, the moments, nightly,

Between your breaths, the hesitations

In your deep sleep; my own held breath,

Listening, and then, temporarily

Relieved, turning toward the window,

Reciting the autonomic（自治的） lesson

Of your lungs that swell and shrink

At last, in rhythm, their vital

Capacity, in liters, 3.1.