Poet-in-residence - The Travelling Salesman Problem
‘Given a finite number of cities and the cost of travel between each pair of them, find the cheapest way a salesman could visit each city once and return to the starting point.’
‘Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped away.’ Paul Brodeur
He travels in the minds of mathematicians.
He has no form but going – a pure line
stretched across an unnamed land.
The assumption is he has no friends
or family to visit to divert his route.
There’s no time for him to stop for food.
You will not see him
freewheel down the valley.
Or sit in jams that idly waste his fuel.
Seasons would affect
the price he has to pay
but where are they?
And what of all those things he’s flogging:
jets and biros, tractors, axes, train-sets,
boxes, trucks… don’t they slow him down?
Constant questions trail him. And for what?
All numbers are imaginary. But look,
here he comes towards us now,
wielding the calculator in his hand,
trying to fathom his value
and plot the point of his home.
South, Autumn 2007
By Heidi Williamson, our poet-in-residence.