Whenever you learn a new language you are essentially building a new map in your brain. The map gets built as you learn to think in the new language.
Also, to continue the analogy, it is easier to learn the new map if you are familiar with the territory around it. I am a software engineer. Most computer languages are similar to each other, so learning a new one is relatively easy. It's harder, though, when the language contains new concepts because that's 'foreign territory'.
So if calculus is new territory for you, you have to learn to think in the mathematical language that describes the concepts. This is not an easy thing, so don't get discouraged.
On the perl subject, I am not surprised. The perl documentation is not that great and not particularly well organized. Get yourself a good perl book.
On poetry - I think poetry lasts not because the language is easier to read, but because the themes and concepts are timeless; love, loss, anger, pity - every generation can understand these. So, you don't have to make a new map.
One of the earliest known english poems - and one of my favorites is called Westron Wind
Quote:
Westron wind when wilt thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ that my love were in my arms,
and I in my bed again.
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The only thing you need to know to appreciate that poem is that, in England, the only good weather comes from the West. Anything else is bad weather (in this case drizzle).