I am a poet, not a philosopher
(At least: one more than the other)
(And now I cannot add,
"Unqualified"
To my self-damnation,
As the qualifier bleakly observes.)
Words being the medium of both,
I thought there might be some blood-shared kinship
Lying between them like an abstract object.
But in fact,
What one makes love to,
The other tortures.
The same object under different tools, different hands, different eyes,
Here permitted to preen, flourish, shine;
There, subjected to mutilations that would make the torture report look tame.
Chesterton's madman was logical,
And his poets sane.
I think I should like that brand of sanity
Which contemplates the earth
And expresses it into that which it is not,
Celebrates it in symbols and daydreams.
Better to be crazed for a bird on the wing
Than agonized over the existence of universals.
My soul sings no nominal melody:
It does not care.
And then there is the low cousin of the poet and the philosopher: the joker. And he says:
ReplyDeleteA realist, a conceptualist, and a nominalist walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We serve your kind and your kind, but not your kind."
Seriously though, academic philosophy can be maddening, sometimes because it refuses to be precise, sometimes because it refuses to be poetic. Sometimes because it feints an attempt but ends up being rigid anyway.
Inspiration can hide in the strangest of places but modern philosophy usually isn't it.