If I Were
Another conjectural work.
If I were a different man than I turned out,
Someone with different ways, hopes and talents.
A sensibility I would not recognize, could not inhabit,
Not reachable by reason and applied effort.
A whole different world spinning around an almost familiar star.
Where would I start, how would I proceed?
I want to experience the starting point,
To begin the race with my failures undramatized:
Bit players assembling to fill out the scenes,
To take up a starring role again with a new heart,
Impulses acute with different means;
Advantage taken of other entrants, slighted by other actors,
Sudden trauma arranged by other unseen forces.
An inner world regulated with a different Senate,
Elected with priorities I cannot align;
Reason advanced and deposed through another
Altogether too familiar fall.
© ross 2023
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Incorrigibly prone to fail is that what you mean? And why if I got it right it all seems purposeless
Purposeless is a little strong. Fallen or incomplete would be my inclination although by Spinoza’s yardstick rather than the Church of Rome. I’m still enchanted, especially with children and in nature. A great scholar in Toronto once said he wouldn’t want to come back as himself if that were possible. He’d prefer to be someone with a different set of gifts. I always thought that was a marvelous thought.
Are you and I on a remote island? I think you’ve met survivors here.
why is it a little strong? don’t you want your students to pass their exams? and not just fail in an endless falling mode just to remain in their college years ?
yeah everybody prefers that luxurious cruise ship Facebook, they’re enjoying their martinis right now. while we have to keep the fire burning.
I don’t see the attempt to implement reason as futile although I refer to it as “the shattered coronation” in another poem because it is essentially impossible to live by and through.
who evaluates human reason? and how? is this shattered coronation a narrow pass in this evaluation? help me understand what you’re saying because i find it unreasonable to accept any reason that cannot be implemented and i see no purpose in such a reason.
We evaluate it ourselves. It’s fate to understand and not to understand however elevated our faculties. The broken crown is the metaphor I used. I could post it although I don’t think there is any readership here from what I can see.
readership? since nobody demands money for the services provided i have no problem and i don’t need thousands of bots fake reads to make me feel read just because i paid as that’s what i would probably get on a site with paid memberships and ‘big readership (of bots)” we may evaluate ourselves but it’s impossible to be correct while doing it thinking there is no external evaluation i must take into consideration – we must at least think the highest possible external evaluation of our evaluating – the canon of Polykleitos for example it was not that perfect because… Read more »
Yes, of course, there is a larger reality than shaped by subjective thought. I don’t personally believe, however, that there is an evaluation that is carried out beyond consciousness, or that exceeds nature in its manifestation. The human mind has limits, but they are not as finite as people generally suppose. Writing poems is an extraordinary way to address those unsettled limitations in my mind. Finally, objective correlatives are very powerful, and have been used to great effect by many artists of genius.