Radio 4 discusses Maths - a poem of bewilderment

Radio 4 discusses Maths

There’s a magic number

called e, that has the 

power to solve the world’s

problems, to be practical in ways

we never dreamed, and I

think of pi and other

imponderables, and I feel my brain

reeling, eyes fluttering, under

the onslaught. It was ever

thus, x years ago, when I sat, 

uniformed but uninformed

at a wooden desk scarred quite

fascinatingly by the past.

Are there any numbers out there

that cannot be written as a 

fraction? That’s it. I break, 

fractured by fractions

and irrational numbers.

© C.M.M. 09/14

I wrote the above yesterday, on the proverbial back of an envelope, while listening to Radio 4's Melvyn Bragg discussion on the radio. I stopped eating my toast while a horribly familiar sensation from my distant schooldays crept over me. My brain had gone into free fall  and my tenuous grasp on the discussion had snapped. However, I was happy that normal activity was still intact: the poem just flowed out and I've only changed one line since. 

I am grateful to my friend Frank for sending me the mathematical statement that provides me with an illustration when all else would have been as meaningless as ... e.