Einstein pondering the problem
His personal life was in shambles.
His marriage was a mess.
“My mind, instead of racing, rambles,”
He wrote his Yiddish mistress.
He was hitting the laughing gas hard.
He wasn’t sleeping much either.
Inhaling N2O by the
yard
Was his idea of a breather.
He was being such a dumb cluck.
He was being such a schmo.
His mistress told him, “Such a schmuck!
Tic Tac Toe? What’s to know?”
Standing at the blackboard, he pondered
The covariant X’s and O’s.
When his mind wandered, he wondered
What, if anything, a schmuck knows.
But stubbornness was his dominant trait—
His sense of destiny his mission.
He was willing to stand and wait,
To be faithful to his vision.
“Eureka!” he exclaimed one night.
It was better
than sex.
When he finally saw
the light,
It was N2O =X+X+X.
Robert Forrey,
2010
