POEM

The Mathematician to His Mate by Ivan Berger
Posted March 3, 2000 · Issue 73

Entrapped in this conjugate, co-chain complex,
our loves homologous, our lives ambiguous,
our livers contiguous;
"Consider the uniform distribution
of logs at their Natural Functions;
and consider the probable occurrence,"
(says Dr. Sigma), "of deviations."
While I am an antilogarithm - antimostrhythms, but one:
hyperbolic, and by turns elliptic,
The world a surface of revolution about my soul.

Polyhedra, O my queen,
in the flux and bloom of youth:
From your thesis to your annulus,
Mount the table for the F test.
For we are homothetically congruent;
and in dampest osculation,
Let us retire.

Ivan Berger was, until its closing in January 2000, the technical editor of Audio magazine. He has written for more than 125 other publications, ranging from The New York Times to obscure electronics magazines. His poetry has been published in the Yale Literary Magazine, the YPSL Songbook, the anthology Other People's Clerihews (ed. Gavin Ewart, Oxford University Press), and on the Web site of a local arts organization. "The Mathematician to His Mate" was originally written for a job as a "rentabeatnik" at an MIT frat party, circa 1960. Berger frequently participates in poetry readings in New Jersey, where he now lives, and does occasional readings in New York City.