when if then

Carl Andre, "On the Sadness" (1978)



*poem structured according to a prime factoring method wherein "Each of the primes between 47 and 2 corresponds to a poet-chosen sentence; for example, 2 corresponds to ‘We are going to die’. To construct each composite line, its corresponding number is expressed... as a product of powers of distinct primes in increasing order. Multiplication corresponds to the conjunction ‘if’ and exponentiation to ‘then’.”