In the bare trees old husks make new designs
Love moves the crows before the dawn
The cherry-sun ushers in the new phase
The radiant mind
addressed by tufts of flocking pear blossoms
proposes new profundities to the soul
Deftness stirs in the cells
of Aigeltinger’s brain which flares
like ribbons round an electric fan
This is impressive, he will soon proclaim
God!
And round and round, the winds
and underfoot, the grass
the rose-cane leaves and blackberries
and Jim will read the encyclopedia to his
new bride — gradually
Aigeltinger you have struck in my conk
illuminating, for nearly half a century I
could never beat you at your specialty
Nothing has ever beaten a mathematician
but yeast
The cloudless sky takes the sun in its periphery
and slides its disc across the blue
They say I’m not profound
But where is profundity, Aigeltinger
mathematical genius
dragged drunk from some cheap bar to serve their petty purposes?
Aigeltinger, you were profoundWilliam Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams, M.D. (1883–1963), was a general practitioner and pediatrician who lived and practiced in Rutherford, N.J. He won the first National Book Award for poetry and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his last collection of poems. He is regarded as one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century; he also wrote fiction, plays, and essays. “Aigeltinger” remembers a mathematically gifted classmate at Horace Mann School in New York City.