The train to the city was always
late. I dressed in silk straps decorated
with every seductive spell.
I pricked myself to test their strength. But
a system cannot demonstrate
its own consistency. I did not long
to merge with the mathematician. In his
stark apartment at Ninth and South, we
collided. We made a
diagonal argument.
My living situation took a long time
to explain. I lived alone in a small room.
I lived with my children and their
many devices. In the fall, I planted small teeth
in the dirt. In the spring, they sent up
green flares. Gödel’s solution
was cyclical. I lived with my first
love and his prize Chryseis. Every morning,
I immersed myself in a tub of ice
water in the yard. Between the first
and second level of infinity,
there may or may not be
other infinities, the mathematician
said. It can’t be proved
or disproved. My first love
called me from a rooftop
in Niigata. I was seventeen. In Gödel’s
solution, time is cyclical. The operator
asked, will you accept the charges?
A palmful of starlings scattered.
My living situation was temporary.
On the train, I read the new translation
of the Iliad. My son called with an urgent
question about the past perfect.
From another century, my children asked,
will you accept the charges? For any consistent
formal system, there will always be statements
that are true, but unprovable within
the system. My living situation
was cyclical. In the evening, I ran
a bath so hot the edges of my body
dissolved. My glasses fogged. Another way
to say this is, longing contains its own
fulfillment. My son’s bass rose through
the walls. Another way to say it is, the god
who gathers clouds enwrapped me.
The mathematician was unassailable.
Still, I sailed toward him on the broad back
of the Broad Street Line. My living
situation was proof of the unprovable.
In the summer, I pulled
each full mouth from the ground.
INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM by Eleanor Stanford
