This is a poem in this series of 144 poems that I’m writing based on the dodeks, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. As far as I know, everybody else calls them dodekatemoria, but that’s a very complicated word to say, so I just call them dodeks.
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Virgo of Libra: The Quants and the Sharks
27° Libra 30′ to 29° Libra 59′
Some advise you to be full of smiles,
to speak hearty words but hide the numbers.
They say pleasing phrases — yet by wiles
they rob the whole house then burn the timbers
to disguise the grime. Enter nerdy quants,
who majored in maths and got C.P.A.’s,
who know the codes for each one of our wants,
and audit each line of our means and ways.
They find missing checks, eleven years back,
and annotate the wonky transactions.
They put all the assets into one stack,
test liabilities by subtractions —
and when the sharks are done with all their flash,
the quants step in, and seize remaining cash.
Image: Two campfires burn in neighboring camps at sundown — one with smoke and no light or heat; and one cheery and bright but almost over because it burned so fast.
Important Relationships
- Part of the Term of Saturn
- Part of Decan III of Libra (administrated by ): The Gyroscope
Colophon
This is a part of a series of poems based on the dodekatemoria, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. The dodekatemoria are sub-segments of the Zodiac, each representing two degrees thirty minutes (2° 30′) of arc; there are 144 dodeks (as I call them) in the full Zodiac, or twelve in each sign. Each dodek is supposed to be a recapitulation or miniature repetition or summary of its parent zodiac sign, as though it were filtered through the lens of the main sign.
The Sun crosses this distance of 2° 30′ in about two and a half days, making these dodeks cognate with the Moon, which crosses one sign of the Zodiac, or thirty degrees (30°) in about two and a half days. The Sun’s passage through a dodek thus mirrors the Moon’s passage through a sign, and squeezes a “mini-year” of passage through twelve signs into a single month.
Each series of dodeks begins at 0° 00′ of its parent sign with the same sign, and there are four dodeks in each sequence of 10° degrees. Each poem in this series will give a (my) name of the dodek, its relevant degrees, a sonnet describing it, a 1-2 sentence description of the dodek, and some other information.
