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INTERVALS

Zoom in to a South coast port,
rebuilt after forties bombs;
a University grown from rubble,
mixed old, recent architecture,
rectangles of glass and grey.

Within, a maze of Faculties,
departments, theatres, Schools and labs;
tall blocks with narrow, dimlit corridors
(which smell of ‘Forest Glade’ floor polish)
and cramped, small-windowed rooms
filled with papers, boxes, books.

Here, a man who studies intervals,
spaces between certain numbers,
gaps which fill his working day.
His thesis: that they form some pattern;
have meanings we don’t understand
just yet, but which he will uncover,
given funding, luck and time.

Already he has written papers,
presented them to colleagues who
are just as much absorbed as he is
in some other quest for truth.

When I met him, he was thirsty,
took me to a nearby bar,
told me all about his children -
three small boys - but didn’t care
to talk about his intervals
or why he chose this form of work.

I pressed him: did he think it mattered,
intervals and gaps and such,
and did he think it had some value,
what he chose to study?

He said his work was trivial,
more and more of less and less,
and wouldn’t make a slip of difference
to anyone at all. I asked

‘If all this stuff is purposeless,
abstract and impractical,
why don’t you ask some bigger questions,
find some answers we could try?’

‘Because,’ he said, ‘we’re frightened to,
the fear of failure cripples us
and funding streams would soon run dry.
Besides, we’d beckon mockery,’

‘better that we concentrate
on problems we can fiddle with,
ones that, maybe, matter little;’

‘that’s why I chose intervals.’

Trevor Hewett