Gregory K. cooked up a cool way for us linearly rationalist Americans to count syllables, following the Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. He calls each such poem a Fib.
I like 'em. I don't feel so embarrassed puzzling out words and counting syllables in this form, as I do trying to fake haiku. While explanation seems to invalidate haiku, it seems perfectly OK to write a Fib and explain its meaning. Anyway, I do so.Galileo said, "Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe." My uncle Bill Hynds, a math teacher, turned this quote into a nifty sampler, with natural examples of Fibonacci series and golden ratio embroidered all over it. Hence:
God
spoke:
"I am."
Then, he wrote
His cosmos in the
alphabet of mathematics.
I already explained this one:
Sneeze
out
haiku.
Carefully
digest each line of
serially lengthening Fib.
WeMostly Genesis 1, with a bit of Exodus 3:14 (informed by John 1:1):
start
with 1
or 0
or is it 2 1s?
No matter the start of it all,
the series accumulates onward, summing itself,
approaching in evermore loquacious lines the golden irrational asymptote.
I
am
"I am."
Let light be
"day" distinct from "night;"
let "sky" divide heaven from earth.
Gather water in "the sea" and discover "the land."
Seed the land, let the water fall as rain, let them grow and multiply and bear good fruit.
Let the stars, and the sun, and the moon mark the days, the seasons, the years, in series distinct and rational each, to golden eternity.
Sound
sounds,
resounds,
surrounded
within silent bounds.
WhatEt tu, William? Then die, ...
is
silence,
surrounded
by silence also?
itFib meta:
is
a tale
Told by an
idiot, full of
sound and fury, Signifying ...
Oh,And meta-Fib:
no!
That's not
at all what
I wanted to say.
Did
you
miss the
first line of
the poem, so full
of its own perfect emptiness?
You
fib,
when you
call it a
"Fib," if you don't
count the syllables right in each line.
E-Can a reversed Fib tell the truth? biF? Euclid? How else may we
ven
if you count
right it's no good if
the rhythm is clumsy like this.
Know the sound?
of one
hand
clap-
Not the same as
a single
clap,
although ...
Only the hand that
erases
may write
a
truth
But of course I amUnbegun prolegomenon
not the first
to love
the
last
here is what I am telling you:IV categories
I assert that the
following
statement
is
true
There are precisely three types ofOr thereaboutsish
people - to wit: those
who can count,
and those
who
cannot
There are also these two types of
people: those who count
syllables
and those
who
do not choose to do so: so there!