Sunday, May 29, 2016

Sex and Math



He saw in imagination   a thin, large-eyed adolescent girl,
the same flush of color near her cheekbones,
standing breathless in a middy blouse, bloomers, and hockey pads,
on the playing field.
She had the air of finding this game a silly one,
yet she was jubilant with excitement and interest, even so.

He could think of her in the morning,
slight-breasted, in a sweater;
her narrow legs   crossed   under a short serge skirt,
biting the end of a pencil over an algebra paper 
to which, frowning,  whispering figures,
shaking back her fluffy hair,
she added
neatly and accurately,

fresh    equations   . . .     .       .        .

-- James Gould Cozzens,  Ask Me Tomorrow (1940)


[With a friendly nod to Love and Math, by Edward Frenkel. ]

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