Any ordinary human's animal brain could do
It, didn't even need to be a human brain:
One, two, a few, a lot; one, two, and infinity.
But once arithmetic wormed its algorithms
Into the imported mind that squatted, like all
Minds, heavily on the functions of neurons,
The little link was forged to four and five,
To calendars and triangles and probabilities.
And then it was no longer so easy to jump
From one, two, maybe three distinct things
Straight into infinity. Then the mind told
The brain, quite firmly, we're both doomed,
You particularly, and self began to mourn
Itself, and suddenly the embodied brain
Began counting obsessively. All the numbers
Are against me, thought one composed
Of these and other compound thoughts,
Leaning against a hemlock trunk beside
A foaming mountain stream in summer,
Which a soft deep-woods sun lit pleasantly.
All the numbers are against me, but I can't
Quit counting and calculating them against
The odds they illustrate for me. I can't bring
Myself to throw this nonsense in the stream
Because although I know I need to stop
Counting, measuring, calculating, recounting
Everything before I can glide into infinity,
Although I know I will complete that leap
Despite me, my mind will not let go of me yet
And has not finished with me until it's left
A husk of me to seek someone else's misery.
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