It’s a little-known fact that God’s headgear — A magician’s collapsible silk top hat, When viewed from Earth, from the bottom up — Is, sub specie aeternitatis,
A pluperfect halo, both circle and square, And a premonition of this truth Spurred on an ancient philosopher, Anaxagoras, to make numerous vain
Attempts to approximate the circle Of his concerns with the square of the cell He was jailed in for impiety. Doomed calculations which God acknowledged
By doffing then pancaking his topper. He was still bareheaded millennia later, When he learned of von Lindemann’s proof that pi Is not the root of a polynomial
With rational coefficients, hence Squaring the circle’s impossible. God un-collapsed, re-donned his hat! But — it was 1882,
Progress was a juggernaut And the public had no patience for “proof.” From below, God’s gesture looked like a signal For all hat- and cap-wearing men,
Proper in their headgear, for nations, Well-stocked with helmets for delicate brainwork, To take up “the compass and straightedge” And prepare for a singular all-out attack
On this seductive conundrum, so men Enlisted en masse in Geometry’s army, Tossing up and away all hats Of cloth, opaque haloes, hurray!
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Squaring the Circle
Philip Fried (B.1945)
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Graphic - Victor Brauner 1903–1966
