If a Garden of Numbers

By Cole Swensen b. 1955 Cole Swensen

If a garden is the world counted

and found analogue in nature

One does not become two by ever ending

so the stairs must be uneven in number

and not exceed

thirteen without a pause

of two paces’ width, which

for instance, the golden section

mitigates between abandon

and an orchestra just behind those trees,

gradations of green that take a stethoscope: we risk:

Length over width

to make the horizon run straight

equals

to make the pond an oval:

Width

over length minus the width

in which descending circles curl

into animals exact as a remainder.

Which means excess. The meaning of the real

always exceeds that of the ideal, said someone.

He was speaking of Vaux-le-Vicomte,

but it’s equally true of parking, or hunting, or wishing you could take it back. He

who is Allen Weiss, actually said, “The meaning

of a plastic or pictorial construct always surpasses the ideal meaning of that work.”

Which is something else entirely. Said

the axonometric

divided by

the anamorphic.

There is nothing that controls our thoughts

more than what we think we see,

which we label “we.”

Cole Swensen, “In a Garden of Numbers” from Ours (University of California Press, 2008).

Source: (University of California Press, )

Biography

Poet Cole Swensen was born and raised near San Francisco, and has since lived in Santa Cruz, California, London, England, Paris, France, and Denver, Colorado, working as a translator, editor, copywriter, and teacher. She began teaching at an alternative high school while in her early twenties and has since taught in community colleges and universities. She began teaching full-time at the University of Denver in 1996 and is the . . .

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