The Parallel Shadows of Logic Lane

 

I had three Oxford interviews;

The first, the evening I’d arrived,

They asked me why I’d had 4 schools;

How sin2x could be simplified.

 

In silent streets I came that night

To the parallels of Logic Lane.

A strange confusion wracked my mind

As shadowed raindrops stung my face.

 

In the next one, on the 3rd floor,

2 men with large moustaches asked

The odds of what could be won of

Some money hidden under a

 

Table I couldn’t see under, but

The other told me what he saw,

But I’d get £50 from the other

If I chose not to make a choice.

 

⅓ of us would get an offer.

Or we could cut ourselves in 3.

That night I slept for 8 hours.

I ate 600 calories.

 

At home I’d cried 46 tears,

Gasping for breath 24 times.

In the next months I would tally

Those numbers that measured my life,

 

Roll them up countless hills, frozen

And then divide them by despair

To try to find a solution.

The answer that was never there.

 

In the last one, on the 3rd day,

2 men who smelled like virgins both

Asked me to solve 2a+6b=4, a-4y=8;

An equation with 2 unknowns.

 

2 variables I could not find;

When I confused the number 6

With a b in my handwriting

One suggested that I change it.

 

The white-jumpered one asked me to

Define a Universal Law.

I said something that’s always true

At any time or spatial point.

 

So he asked whether that meant that

Him wearing a white jumper now

And here was a Universal

Law. I didn’t know. I still don’t,

 

But throughout those next months I searched

For some truth which held these threads in

This stainless shape of moments, falling

Away like scales on violins

 

Approaching infinite nothing,

Expanding in Euclidian streets,

Were we count parallel lines in

Seconds; symbols on paper sheets.

 

 

 

by Max Maher