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.