The Riddle of Flat Circles [excerpt]

The Romans got their circling powers
From a corps of Hellenic mathematicians.
Rome--the container-skull, the fountainhead--
Lookout holes calling itself Reason.

Against her Spain--Maya uprisings--against that grip--
People with terra cotta plus bluegrass flesh--
Flights, transhumance y more or less dispoblado.
Two conch-shaped continents boisterously Romesqued.

The merry die young. The sad, guarded
And anxious live long lives.  The really grim 
Are immortal.  Continue the anti-anti-census.
Capitulate to no Romes.

Heliodemography is the study of the population
Of the sun.  Mrs. Smith lives there with the Mister.
Through an art-of-the-state telescope Iris observes
Cantilevered Yiddish’s stern stars.