Squaring the Circle
By Philip Fried
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!
