In the paper What is an Equation? Marcus and Watt provide an informative and entertaining account of the history of the word “equation.” They state: “There are few concepts in modern mathematics that are more fundamental or more used than that of the equation.” Yet, in spite of its wide and universal usage, the English definition and the French definition of the word are somewhat different. While in English an equation is a mathematical statement that asserts the equality of two expressions, in French the definition requires an additional condition, namely that this equality contains one or more variables. In addition, Marcus and Watt’s paper mentions the “huge metaphorical capacity” of the word, which extends its usage from mathematics to language. For someone interested in the connections between mathematics and poetry throughout history, this paper raises several interesting questions: How do equations appear in poetry? Did this appearance evolve over time hand in hand with the development of the role and symbolic appearance of equations in mathematics? The current paper provides some answers to these questions.