Mercurian Mathematics

by Gbari Garrett, Age 17, Virginia, USA

Below is a poem written by Gbari Garret, one of the delegates for the 2018 International Congress of Youth Voices. Gbari says that the goal of his own writing is to make his readers wonder about situations and opinions that they may have taken for granted. He satirizes human conflict in his poetry and often finds it easiest to deliver a message by juxtaposing two subjects with the goal of making an entire idea easier to understand.

Mercurian Mathematics

On the rocky surface of Mercury, one can find a lonely, overheated space rock

It sits there, having crashed through the non-existent atmosphere

lifeless and hot, fallen hopelessly out of orbit.

No human will ever set eyes on it,

nor will any other creature that we humans have ever described.

One Mercurian day lasts two Mercurian years,

all of which are plagued with swinging temperatures,

and seasonless,

moonless,

craters forevermore.

Yet it is certain,

in this infinite path called time,

that events will,

eventually,

transpire:

stories that we can,

inevitably,

never know,

circumstances that we,

fundamentally,

fail to fathom,

that only valiant space rock will bear witness to.

Tales of war,

of wings,

of the roads of Rome,

gods and power,

disaster and death,

knowledge and love,

still air,

and spent time.