CLXXXXIV
Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! This is a double sonnet—not just two sonnets one after the other, but two sonnets functioning as a single poem. The first line of the first is the last line of the second, and that last line of the first the first of the second. You have noticed already that I get off on structural dovetailing like that—especially when I can make it work to support the flow of the thought through the whole piece. Did I do that here? Let’s find out.
PROPOSED:
That the Modern Scientific World-View, In its Euphoria over Learning
How to do Neat Things with Matter, Has Left Something out of the Equation
There was a time when men could see the sky,
A grand cathedral vaulted and ablaze
With myriad candles lifted up on high
By nights for Vespers; in the brighter days,
The great Rose Window eastward shed its rays
For Morning Prayer, and each and every flame
Burned eloquent in litanies of praise,
In fugues and canons to extol the Name.
But now the sky, though larger, is more tame,
And modern man sees what he’s taught to see:
Vast numbers are just numbers all the same,
Though multiplied toward infinity;
And quarks and quasars cannot speak to us
Except as agitated forms of dust.
Except as agitated forms of dust,
We don’t know how to know the thing we are:
The biochemistry of love is lust
As an atomic furnace is a star,
And all that’s known is particles at war.
And yet we do know love, and yet we know
That it and lust are infinitely far
Apart. We know the stars and how they glow,
Though they know nothing of us here below.
So even while we’re slogging through the mire,
We cannot help ourselves, but as we go
We cock our heads to listen for the choir.
We know that half the truth is half a lie:
There was a time when men could see the sky.
Remember: for more poetry like this, go to https://lanternhollow.wordpress.com/store/ and order Stars Through the Clouds! Also look for Inklings of Reality and Reflections from Plato’s Cave, Williams’ newest books from Lantern Hollow Press: Evangelical essays in pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And look for Williams’ very latest book, Deeper Magic: The Theology behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis, from Square Halo Books!
Donald T. Williams, PhD
CLXXXXIII
Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”
Ancient men marveled at the regularity of the movements of the heavens, which enabled them to predict the paths of the planets. It was not until modern times though that we were able fully to appreciate just how mathematical are the laws that govern the operations of the physical universe—all of it, not just the visible parts. Music is mathematics applied to pitch and time. It is more than that, but not less. So poets from Milton to MacDonald to Lewis and Tolkien have, in an appropriate metaphor indeed, portrayed creation as a song or a dance. It was in Job all along: at creation the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
COMMENTARY, JOB 38:7
The Novas were the trumpets,
The Black Holes played the bass,
The Comets were the clarinets,
The concert hall was Space.
The Stars were violins,
The Angels sang in thirds,
The Planets danced a minuet,
Jehovah wrote the words.
And still they sing together,
And with the inner ears
The clear-souled man can listen yet:
The music of the spheres.
Remember: for more poetry like this, go to https://lanternhollow.wordpress.com/store/ and order Stars Through the Clouds! Also look for Inklings of Reality and Reflections from Plato’s Cave, Williams’ newest books from Lantern Hollow Press: Evangelical essays in pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And look for Williams’ very latest book, Deeper Magic: The Theology behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis, from Square Halo Books!
Donald T. Williams, PhD
CLXXXXII
Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”
Saul’s conversion experience on the Road to Damascus hanged him from a persecutor of the Christian church to its greatest missionary; it changed him from Saul the Pharisee to Paul the Apostle; it eventually changed the church from a Jewish sect to a universal faith; and thus it changed the world. Let’s try to get inside his head via a villanelle:
ROAD TO DAMASCUS
“I am Jesus whom you persecute.”
“If you’re the Christ, why isn’t Israel free?”
I’d thought it something he could not refute.
He did not argue; he was almost mute,
His searing radiance just content to be:
“I am Jesus whom you persecute.”
And I was on a journey, resolute
To stamp his sect out once and finally.
Death was an answer that they could not refute!
But how they faced it shook me to the root,
And now this Flame was burning into me,
“I am Jesus whom you persecute.”
Gamaliel had taught me all the fruit
That reason could produce–a Pharisee,
I had traditions no one could refute–
But now it was all burning into soot,
The Fire blinding me so I could see:
“I Am Jesus whom you persecute.”
It was a Reason I could not refute.
Remember: for more poetry like this, go to https://lanternhollow.wordpress.com/store/ and order Stars Through the Clouds! Also look for Inklings of Reality and Reflections from Plato’s Cave, Williams’ newest books from Lantern Hollow Press: Evangelical essays in pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And look for Williams’ very latest book, Deeper Magic: The Theology behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis, from Square Halo Books!
Donald T. Williams, PhD
CLXXXXII
Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”
Plato started a lot of conversations that he couldn’t finish. He was trying to find the universal and the absolute by looking in the wrong place. He sought well, but the final answer was beyond his grasp. But he sets the questions up better than anyone. What if there was someone who could come into Plato’s Cave from the outside world of the sun? What then?
Plato
REFLECTIONS FROM PLATO’S CAVE
The fleeting shadows flow across the wall;
That’s all we know. We think they may arise
Outside our minds, and bring before our eyes
Some glimpse of Truth–but by the time they fall
To us, a faint and hieroglyphic scrawl
Is all that’s left. We try to analyze,
Deduce from patterns what the shapes disguise–
They’re hard to catch and harder to recall.
We think reflections of Reality
Are cast by Sunlight shining–how we crave
To turn and look–but still we strive in vain.
No merely mortal man will ever see
Whether the Door behind us in the Cave
Is there, so firmly Fate has bound our chain.
So many years we strove against the chain
That gradually some gave up, and hope was dead.
“There is no Door; there is no Cave,” they said,
“No explanation, nothing to explain.
It’s just a game you play inside your brain:
All the poetry you’ve ever read
Makes chemical reactions in your head;
That’s all that Pleasure is, and also Pain.”
What of the Beautiful, the True, the Good?
“They’re all illusions; they are all the same,
Sounds upon the wind, an empty name,
And that is all that can be understood.”
But then the rule that says that nothing’s true
Must be applied to their denial too!
So hope could not completely be denied.
Yet still the shadows flicker on the wall,
And we’re not certain what they mean at all
In spite of every theory we have tried.
If only one of us could get outside
Into the Light that fills that vaster hall
And not go blind, but come back and recall
For us the land where the True Shapes abide!
If only–but the ancient Grecian knew
No way that it could be. It seemed absurd
To hope or to despair. So still the True
Was but in shadows seen, in echoes heard–
Until the birth of a barbaric Jew
Who was in the Beginning; was the Word.
The Word
Remember: for more poetry like this, go to https://lanternhollow.wordpress.com/store/ and order Stars Through the Clouds! Also look for Inklings of Reality and Reflections from Plato’s Cave, Williams’ newest books from Lantern Hollow Press: Evangelical essays in pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And look for Williams’ very latest book, Deeper Magic: The Theology behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis, from Square Halo Books!
Donald T. Williams, PhD
CLXXXXI
Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.” I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”
One of my life goals is to write a history of philosophy entirely in limericks. Why? Because I can.
Rene DesCartes
INDUBITABLY
Limericks # 15-18
There once was a man named DesCartes
Who asked, “Where should Philosophy start?”
He said, “If I can doubt it,
I’ll just do without it.
Now, that ought to make me look smart!”
So he doubted the clear and the plain
To see what would finally remain.
‘Twas thus he found out
There was no way to doubt
The doubt in the doubter’s own brain.
“I exist!” then with joy he concluded.
“On this point I cannot be deluded:
Even though it sounds dumb,
If I think–ergo sum!”
To this day he has not been refuted.
If you ask what this tale is about,
It’s that doubting must always run out.
For you never can doubt
That you’re doubting the doubt
That you doubt when you’re doubting your doubt.
Remember: for more poetry like this, go to https://lanternhollow.wordpress.com/store/ and order Stars Through the Clouds! Also look for Inklings of Reality and Reflections from Plato’s Cave, Williams’ newest books from Lantern Hollow Press: Evangelical essays in pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And look for Williams’ very latest book, Deeper Magic: The Theology behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis, from Square Halo Books!
Donald T. Williams, PhD
