Monday's Poetry: "The Square Root of Three"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

This week's selection falls under the general heading of cult poetry. It was featured in the movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo, which is easily the second best Harold and Kumar movie ever made. There is a scene near the end of the movie where Kumar (Kal Penn) is breaking up his ex-girlfriend's wedding (a la Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate and Bruce Willis in Blind Date), when the bride suddenly turns to him and complains that he never does anything spontaneous, or lame, or whatever. Kumar immediately rises to the challenge and begins stepping over furniture while reciting this poem - a poem that he was supposedly writing the day they first met in the university library, just minutes before they had sex in the university library. How sweet is that?

The Square Root of Three
by David Feinberg

I'm sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that's good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I'll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

Kumar's recitation of this poem is the high point of the movie. He never misses a beat or a syllable as he climbs over furniture and steadily closes the distance between himself and his lady love. It is a very touching scene, one that even surpasses the bong-smoking incident in the airplane restroom, and the duo's inadvertent parachuting into George Bush's Crawford ranch house.

They just don't write movies like that anymore! And the poem ain't bad either!