Who Has Seen Infinity?

on the 10th anniversary of the death of Bob Kaufman

A mathematician imagines infinity
B-flat is its key
Cadavers play banjos there
Dead audiences eat oysters
Empty of flesh and pearls
For what use is infinity
Godless and lifeless who would live there
Hypercubists projected in perspective in flatland

Infinitesimalism that I understand
Just there in the palm of your hand
Keep this truth you believers in magnitudes and quantities
Lines in your hand are valleys between
Mountains too high too infinite to climb
Neutrinos vast planets teeming with life
Ontologically determinable
Perfectly created
Quarks speed along the life line
Raining florescence
Subatomic particles abound appear vaporize
Trillions of electron clouds cannot hide the sky

Unknowable is infinity and useless
Void is infinity and false
Who has seen infinity none born to die have seen
X-ray your hand
You will see me a pit of bones
Zoom in your electron microscope you will see my hiding place

w.t.spadaro

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