Therefore I may suppose
that were both sinewy female flesh
Our features tell us
every day was a lonely Wednesday
as symmetrical as the hemispheres of our mind
Emmy, did maths put bread on the table those seven years
when men took from your mind
Without paying, with the excuse
that there were only numerical values in you,
An algebra too pedantic, worthless to the long-legged philosophers
Today they’d lock you in a computer, label you artificial intelligence
give you a coquettish name, Vanda or Irma,
let you use algorithms
to calculate how many bombs to drop on each continent
to eliminate the possibility of a nuclear war
I remember when they peeked under your theorem
in the classical mechanics class
thinking there was a moustachioed man underneath
Certainly not a woman’s pears
stealing the road from the high heels again
Emmy, the world no longer fits into an equation
Some women believe that during hunting season it is permitted
to bring woman to the brink of extinction
It is then that I feel the cold symmetry of solitude
and I know, when you cried, your mother, too,
stood in front of your room listening
never opening the door.
Monika Herceg (born 1990) Croatia
Translated by Mirza Purić
Source: Versopolis Poetry
- Amalie Emmy Noether was a German mathematician who made many important contributions to abstract algebra. She discovered Noether's theorem, which is fundamental in mathematical physics. [from Wikipedia]
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