How should I begin?
I find myself residing
at the dried out end of a dead history.
All my thoughts are dirt
scattered on a coffin,
and I a dilettante funereal spectator here.

How should I presume?
A besuited bourgeois mourner,
virgin to surrender and vivid sense,
I scour lichened stones,
desperately seeking
Daedalus's paternal secret of where we will land.

Well I was born with four fingers on each hand,
and with my eight fingers and my thumbs I do maths.

Once again, how should I begin?
I've started weak and I'm stuttering,
But I have remembered all my lines.
It seems that I have thus presumed
to talk of maths in front of crowded rooms,
but I'll make the two times table mine.

How should I begin?
I find myself residing
at the dried out end of a dead history.
How should I presume?
A besuited bourgeois mourner,
virgin to surrender and vivid sense,?

Calculus finishes me,
I don't follow trigonometry,
I've got nothing to add to algebra
(the more complex functions I don't remember).
But arithmetic¦
The absolute zero
is arithmetic on fingers and toes.

I have remembered all my lines,
and I'll make the two times table mine.
I will not presume, but I will thus begin.