POEM: NOTIONS
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/
contemplativeinquiry 