Artwork: The Problem with Crabs by Will Jacques

Anatomist Doing Euclid
Terry Trowbridge

An Alexandrian anatomist washes Euclid’s unwrapped corpse
and stretches one trapezius across the other.
Here compares congruent hints of life that swam
for hours cantilevering between catawampus arms
and cable-stayed spine, wrapped columns of rib bones
blown by lung layers of symmetry.
The anatomist waves flies from his surgery and applies oils.
Having paid a scribe and read The Elements himself,
his compass measures from each trapezoid corner
to the occipital protuberance. Recording the imaginary lines
as distances and as ratios and as angles he recalls the definitions:
“A line is length without breadth” a pun, he gruffs,
“A point is that which has no part” and looking to the fluids and flies
he deduces that in death the soul shrinks to a point.

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