A KIND OF BEAUTY

(A villanelle for my high school maths teacher – and musician – Frank Reid, who would lecture at university, and the French mathematician, philosopher and music theorist Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, an “unbeliever”.)

“Prepare yourself well, for darkness will come” –
     Our maths teacher, mild as the Shannon, contended –
“But faith will not wait to rise when you succumb.”
Limpid by nature, unfazed by the thrum
     Of myriad minds that his class discontented;
“Prepare yourself well, for darkness will come.”
Up went the whine: “What good is this sum
     In the real world?” He smiled, not the least bit offended,
For faith doesn’t wait to rise when you succumb.
Algebra, quadratics, functions that plumb
     The depths before calculus winded and wended;
“Prepare yourself well, for darkness will come.”
To brave souls he chalked up a French rule of thumb
     That d’Alembert coined and he kindly extended –
For faith doesn’t wait to rise when you succumb.
“Allez en avant,” it directed the glum,
     “et la foi vous viendra*.” Take heart, the words rendered;
“Prepare yourself well, for darkness will come,
But faith will not wait to rise when you succumb.”

* “Go forward, and faith will come.”

– Rita Glennon

(As someone who loved maths at school, but didn’t pursue it afterwards, good faith met me at an ending that was a beginning.)