If one were to compile two little lists

of numbers that by simple rules abide,

the first that of all the odd primes consists

which when it is asked by 4 to divide

a remainder of 1 after it leave,

the second of those which together tied

in a sum as two squares one could conceive,

he would search for a difference in vain

for as far as he wants he would retrieve

always the same primes, again and again,

up to infinity, with no exception.

How can it be? This fact is too insane

to be coincidence, and the conception

of a proof dates back to three hundred years

ago, but this was the humble inception

of a research that led to what appears

nowadays as a vaster, richer field,

far more than what was seen behind the meres

of what XVII century revealed

to Pierre de Fermat, the mathematician

that still many stunning results did yield.

So often from an easy proposition,

investigating the remotest cause,

accumulating one good intuition

after another, without any pause,

generations of brilliant minds have found

under the former a deeper because,

a farther-reaching truth, a higher ground,

until vanquished all blindness strife by strife

human knowledge will even God astound.

This is mathematics, this is my life.

"But please, are you certain I have to follow?

I know your decision I can't refute,

but if my blooming life you want to swallow

you'll eat an unripe fruit.

I'm barely twenty, I just started working,

I'll move in with the one that has my heart:

our life hasn't begun and now it's murking,

you will tear her apart.

At least let me touch her one more time, listen

please, just for some more, please Death, let me stay!"

In Death's eyes I saw tears of pity glisten.

"You must come anyway."

Enveloped by shadow, covered by dust,

on one of my shelves sits a wooden rook:

this chess piece is an ugly thing to look

at, crude, many-splintered, lacking all gust,

as if someone the carving did entrust

to some blind man who very soon forsook

all hope and sloppily produced that crook

of a piece that more than a guest nonplussed.

I was a child when in my grandpa's shed

I shaped and contemplated it with joy;

in all my life (that ethereal alloy

of thoughts and dreams and ifs inside my head)

on this shelf contorted on itself stands

the one thing I made proudly with my hands.

It was a certain dusk of reverie

when the Ghost of my future came to ask:

"Will you come? All your days I will unmask,

but with the dawn will go your memory.".

What should I do? To see and then unsee?

I know, I'll write all down! My secret task

concealing behind an innocent mask,

"I'll come." I said; the Ghost just smiled at me.

I woke up, the sun sparkling on the dew;

what did I see? I can't remember. Quick

my fingers found some paper in my pocket:

I did beat the curse! But ere I could mock it

I read: "I'm sorry, but I knew your trick.

After all, am I not the future you?".

Don't play the "Poor you" card,

no Harold, don't you dare!

When Kim "Biohazard"

wrote on my derrière

I saw you laughed so hard

that you fell off your chair!