Back to AtD Reimann maths ain't life. p.891

[alice wellintown]

As usual, the Pyncher has got his talons in a widening, turning and
turning gyre, and a sphere. So Yeats is here and mappings of spheres
with lines of mathematics.


Too cute for correspondences, too cool for us to care for? Perhaps.

But ambiguity is the game here as we turn and turn.

So, Yash is with child. Whose child is it?

It is her child, sure. That much we can be certain of. And, she can be
certain she is with child.

And the night she knew for certain, she dreamed. What did she know?
What certitude brought on this dream? Was it that she knew for cetain
that she was with child? Or that Reef was the father? Or both?

We know how she might know she is with child. But how does she know
she is with Reef's child?

And, even if she knows his sperm met her egg, does this make the child
Reef's child?

Has Cyprian, who is pleased to imagine his auxillary and ambiguous
masked fantasy a sperm as worthy as Reef's sperm, a claim, if not a
certain one, to the child not yet born or at least to paternity?

There are masks put on to train and make a hunter's bird hunt. A bird
or a penis for a hunter without one, is a masked bird for a cunt.

And, the mask is taken off to make the hunt. But this, only when
certainty drives a dream of unmasking.

Here, the mask of math is removed and the Earth is made a map, a
graphic representation; she is lifted into the eternal wind above the
living planet where, not out of nature, she has a vision of her
imperfect sphere  and how it measures not the inextinguishable planet
and the force of life within her. Now she must dance and be vlessed by
everthing she looks upon.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-winding-stair/

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

  Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Yeats/Among.htm