Let Us Now Praise Prime Numbers by Helen Spalding Let us now praise prime numbers With our fathers who begat us: The power, the peculiar glory of prime numbers Is that nothing begat them, No ancestors, no factors, Adams among the multiplied generations. None can foretell their coming. Among the ordinal numbers They do not reserve their seats, arrive unexpected. Along the lines of cardinals They rise like surprising pontiffs, Each absolute, inscrutable, self-elected. In the b