Descartes
at dinner darkly said,
“The
pain that rattles in my head
Has
turned the ages out of bed.
I think, therefore I am.”
And
Berkeley in his study thought,
“God
does not sleep and was not taught,
Without
His Being all is nought.
He thinks, therefore we are.”
But
Russell raised a sudden hand
And
said, “You do not understand,
A
person is as driven sand.
There are, I fear, just thoughts.”
Spinoza
smiled a secret smile
And
scanned the heavens mile by mile;
The
starlight walked upon the Nile
And lit the ancient courts.
------
Addenda
Descartes
ignored the social round
And
kept his ear upon the ground
To
listen for the slightest sound
And what it might unfold.
God
sat on high and put a hand
Upon
the tiny pineal gland;
He
did not really understand
But did as He was told.
The
ancient systems fell away
And
Galen had no more to say,
Poor
Paracelsus left the fray
And could not be consoled.
Now
from my window all I see
Is
mechanicians nervously
Rush
to and fro like men set free:
They shiver in the cold.
------
When
Berkeley voyaged to the West
He
doubted that Descartes knew best,
Instead
he thought the world was blessed –
The object of God’s thought.
The
stones which threatened to depart,
And
all the sticks which lay apart,
Now
braced themselves for a new start –
A vehicle for the ‘ought’.
Indeed,
each time he closed his eyes
He
did so trusting that the skies
Would
not become a pack of lies
And set the world at nought.
George
Berkeley on his deathbed lay
And
used his final strength to pray
That
soon the night might yield to day
And show the God he sought.
------
Lord
Russell settled down to tea
To
mix again agreeably
His
sex-life and philosophy –
The thesis and the bun.
The
atoms that composed this lord
Grew
restless and extremely bored
If
by the time his tea was poured
The talk had not begun.
He
pointed out that none can say
Just
why it is that night and day
Should
alternate in such a way
One by one by one.
But
Russell on the North Wales coast
Inclined
to pocket every boast
And
understand what man needs most
Beneath the setting sun.
------
Spinoza
ground his lenses for
The
pittance due to all the poor,
And
loved God truly all the more
No matter what might chance.
He
honed his self-taught intellect
On
metaphysics’ dialect
And
made a Dutchman’s analect
To answer that of France.
He
thought this massive, starry frame –
A
process which remains the same –
Worthy
to be addressed by name,
The apple of his glance.
And
in the interstellar deep,
Where
quarks are quick and do not keep,
The
light years and the quasars leap
In self-expressive dance.
====================
© February 1980