GHAAP - Sonnets from the Northern Cape

Ghaap
Sonnets from the Northern Cape
by Michael Cope

2 Numbers

The human mind, (or mine, to be precise)

does not embrace big numbers easily:

we make our way by rote or by “twice three,

five fours,” some recitation to count rice

or apprehend the large. How many stars are there,

how many sands, birds, gems or molecules?

How many stones lie in this field, where

it’s all stones and all the stones are tools?

How does each flow? What is the calculus

of its presence? What can one conclude

from the numbers? Were they populous

or persistent? How great a multitude

is more than many? Names of numbers are
helpless against the massed particular.