Classic Poem

Every other man
runs a business
Every fourth man
is professional.

A table
not with four legs
but with statistical legs.

This is that strangest
of all worlds, numbers ,
which no one can enter
as a whole man
nor leave behind

for it is the principle
of the mind at work
its style, its strict
proportions
its alignment
its very faculty

that timeless order
which is bilk to poets,
wholly without heart or humor,
immaterial as fairy
yet the frame of industry

the grub of scholars
the final sawdust
of the absolute.