Rachel Hadas

New Math

Out of the place I knew,
I feel into another
world in which I merged with my beloved,

into a world where one and one make two
but two so closely intertwined
they seem more like a single entity –

not he and I, not you and me, but we.
And so we changed, and so we still are growing:
one to two but also two to three.

I’m no mathematician.
But can I make you see
the process?  Portal opens into portal,

vista into vista, limitless,
infinitely generous addition.
The full cup keeps on filling.

There’s no subtraction.
There is only giving.
One is drawn to one so that makes two;

two intertwine so that makes one again.
But also something new
grows from me and you –

startling emergence, a fresh entity.
One, then two, then one again, then three,
a brand-new being born to you and me.

Author: Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas’s most recent book is “Ghost Guest” (2023).  She has two new books on the horizon: “Forty-four Pastorals” for late 2024, and a prosimetrum, alternating prose and poetry, “From Which We Start Awake,” in 2025.  She taught  English for many years at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, and is currently Original English Verse Editor of “Classical Outlook.”

 

Plume: Issue #66 January 2017