contemplativeinquiry

I like this poem for its depiction of a young person’s best efforts, leading to the experience of ‘discourse by dismissal’ and a counter-affirmation of the ‘vigour of heresy’.

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate

Plurality should not be posited without necessity

                William of Ockam

In my first serious essay

For Religious Studies

I apply Occam’s razor

(Choice of budding scientist)

To God’s reputation:

All power to do all things,

All essence in all things,

All guidance for all things,

Past, present, future.

Keeping it simple, I favour

The universe as it is, in its cycles

Of boom and dust, orbits

And double-helix feats, all

Loosed by laws of urge

And reaction, lure and strife,

First seed, last song,

Billiard balls colliding

Ad infinitum, no recourse

To maker or judge.

I await appreciation

Of insight and logic, but

None comes, others praised

In a covenant of dogma,

My first taste of discourse

By dismissal, my first vow

For the vigour of heresy.

Earl Livings Libation Port Adelaide, AUS: Ginninderra Press, 2018 www.ginninderapress.com.au

NOTE: Earl Livings lives in Melbourne, Australia and edited Divan, Australia’s first all-Australian online poetry journal from 1999 to 2013. His first poetry collection Further than Night, was published in 2000, and in 2005 he won the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Competition. His poetry and fiction have been published in journals and anthologies in Australia, Britain, Canada, the USA and Germany. He is currently working on a Dark Ages novel and his next poetry collection.

My thanks to Nimue Brown for drawing attention to the Libation collection at http://druidlife.wordpress.com/2020/03/29/