To: John Heywood 1546 Poem by Eaton Bard

Two plus Two
Never became Four,
But always
Was be Four.
Still, it will
Be, too.

Two plus two
Is just One
Defector from the kingdom
Outside the parentheses
Of time

A refugee
From the ancient tree.
Whose leaves do not wither,
Nor does their
Meaning dither

(A priori preceasing,
A flailing drowning mind
Grasped the suf defixing
Notational evidence
Inside the polynomial
Experience)

And gave it up
With final breath,
To haunt the mind
No it was not Hilbert,
Nor Newton.
But the lot of us to bind

I no
Therefore I am.
Two minus Two
Is not.

How is it
That I know?
Those things that
Are not so?


(To: John Heywood 1546
fwd: René Descartes 1619)