Contributor's contribution: Integers, and Reasons for reticence

Two poems for politicians struggling with numbers.

Editor’s note: As Winston Churchill said someone said, there’s nothing worse than democracy. Maybe that’s because democracy demands so much damn math to make work.

This week, two aspiring European go-getters had to contend with the fact that their figures were off. Fortunately, since one is a mathematician and the other a former investment banker, we are confident that both will find ways to hold their books to account.

M.E. Grey is a British-origin poet based in Brussels.

Integers

Count these rocks.
Break one in half.
Half a rock is a rock.
Count them again.

Reasons for reticence

Positive visualisation, publicly expressed:
Hostage to fortune.