I am sorry to find out, after a brief background search on Ms. Symborska, that her life displayed all the dweeb-patterns as seen in Jaromil, the Milan Kundera character I love to deride so much. This is not a very good poem; it makes an awkward reading, but the mathematical ideas expressed makes it relevant to the module and especially interesting.
This is reason enough for me to offer a free-rambling intepretation, so if you'll indulge me for one post--
Island where all becomes clear.
1. The island is Mathematics. Welcome to the world of Maths!
Solid ground beneath your feet.
2. "Solid ground" undefined terms, axioms of mathematics(?)
3. "Solid ground" everything else is groundless (?)
The only roads are those that offer access.
4. The only questions asked are constructive
aside: There are roads that "don't offer access"?!
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
5: Proofs open up new paths through ignorance (foliage)
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
6: This vaguely refers to speculation, or intelligent guesses (?)
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
7: This vaguely refers to the "eureka" moment as cherished by all bona fide nerds.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
8: At first I thought this was stating the obvious, but then
9: Imagine looking across the valley, specifically at the trees on the other side. You can see all the features there very clearly, but you have not found a way to get to the other side! For that, you will need some "[bush bending] beneath the weight of proofs."
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
10: Possibility 1. The atmosphere discourages you from thinking critically.
11: Possibility 2. In this Utopia, nothing stays unknown or unresolved for long.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
12: Because you get all these dead mathematicians whispering stuff into your ears.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
13: Conclusions comes only sporadically. Once it is freed from the lake bottom, it bobs quite readily to the surface. Maybe this means that the first step is always the hardest.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view on the Essence of Things.
14: Possibly uncharacteristic praise of dogmatism.
Corollary to 14: Possibly, after all this doubting and questioning and decosntruction of knowledge, being a good mathematician still takes a definite serving of balls and tough braincases.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
15: No one makes mathematics his/her whole reality.
As if all you can do here is to leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
16: Corollary to (15).
Into unfathomable life.
17: Classical dweeb sign-off!
18: Real life is always where we end up in and what we are more used to, even though it is more complicated and much harder to understand than mathematics.
--END OF EQUIVOCATION--
Please comment if you have some better way of deciphering the above poem!
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