Some Contributions to the Sociology of Numbers by Robert Dawson

The ones you notice first are the natural  numbers.
Everybody knows their names; they are the anchors,
the stars, the alphas, the reference points. And of course
the rational numbers, who hang out with them,
sit next to them in arithmetic class.
It must be admitted that some are sidekicks,
spear carriers;  11/17  for instance
is never likely to make headlines.
But the Grade Eight teacher makes sure they all fit in.
Then in high school you start to notice the others, the misfits.
They have weird names, refuse to conform,
are the subjects of sinister rumors:
Did you hear about that Pythagorean ritual murder?
Yeah, creepy: something like that happens,
you bet there’s an irrational mixed up in it. You want
to watch yourself around them. One numerator,
one denominator, that’s what I say.

But not all irrational numbers are the same.
Consider  e : poster child for “It Gets Better”.
Awkward and poorly approximated for the first few terms,
but  ¹⁄_n!  gets small so fast
that soon  e  is accepted among the rationals
almost as one of their own. They privately feel
that e ’s exotic air of the transcendental
indicates their own cosmopolitan taste.
Good marks in calculus, outstanding in Theory of Interest.
Ambition:  to get an MBA.

And π :  happy-go-lucky, Whole-Earth-Catalog spirit,
equally at home in Stats or Industrial Arts.
No one can really explain why  π  gets on
so flirtingly well with some denominators,
the sevenths, say, or the hundredandthirteenths.
and not with others. That’s just how things are.
But the fit’s never perfect, and some day you’ll see  π  
leaning against a signpost,  thumb-out by the side of the highway,
living in the moment, destination anywhere,
waiting for the wind to change.

φ , long-haired, dressed in black, with a pentacle pendant,
and ill-fitting T-shirt depicting Stonehenge or the Pyramids.
Talks about sunflowers, crystals, numerology,
doesn’t get on with any fractions at all.
It’s hard to be sure if they avoid  φ  or  φ  them; but every chance
for approximation misses by the largest possible margin.
1 + ¹⁄_{(1 + ¹⁄(1 + ¹⁄(1 + ...)))}    is the loneliest number.

Fractals by Diana Der-Hovanessian

                             Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare
                                                    --Edna St. Vincent Millay

Euclid alone began to formulate
the relation of circle, plane and sphere
in equations making it quite clear
that symmetry is what we celebrate.

From Treatise on Infinite Series by Jacob Bernoulli

Even as the finite encloses an infinite series
      And in the unlimited limits appear,
So the soul of immensity dwells in minutia
      And in narrowest limits no limits inhere.
What joy to discern the minute in infinity!
      The vast to perceive in the small, what divinity!

Geometry by Rita Dove

       I prove a theorem and the house expands:
       the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
       the ceiling floats away with a sigh.

Lines from Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE

The true woman who possesses exceeding wisdom,
     She consults a tablet of lapis lazuli,
     She gives advice to all lands,
     She measures off the heavens, she places the
               measuring cords on the earth.

Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE), the earliest woman known to me who was both poet and mathematician

Gravity & Levity by Bin Ramke

This is a bigger world than it was once
it expands an explosion it can't help it it has

nothing to do with us with whether we know or
not whether our theories can be proved

whether or not a mathematician
knew a better class of circles

(he has a name, Taniyama, a Conjecture)
than was ever known before before—

not circles, elliptic curves. Not doughnuts.
Not anything that is nearly, only is, such

a world is hard to imagine, harder to live in,
harder still to leave. A little like love, Dear.

A Prime Rhyme by Kenneth Falconer

If you want to show the primes go on for ever,
There's a trick that Euclid taught us long ago.
Suppose not: then multiply these primes together,
And add one to get a number, call it rho.
Just take a careful look at this big number,
Rho has to have a factor which is prime,
And it can't be one of those you've got already,
So there's your contradiction shown in rhyme.

The Invention of Zero by Derek Collins

"The Muslims invented zero"
the taxi driver says
as he drives me home from the dentist.
Back at school in Kashmir
he'd been good at maths
encouraged that it was Muslims
who'd given zero a symbol,
a name, sifr. He's right.
I'd read in Dantzig's book, "Number",
how the Greeks could not imagine
the void, nothingness, as a number,
left it to the Arabs to lass emptiness
in a small circle, give it power
just as the dentist has filled
my hollow tooth to give it bite.
With the numbers the Arabs gave us
sums sharpened, became simple to do.

So simple and yet so difficult
to draw a circle around nothing,
around yearning,
so that it won't remain empty.