Lyceum

28 June 2022

Aristotle and friends walking amiably
over a concourse of trees
discuss beings, assert that no thing
can both be and not be.
In the next room the Christians,
grown weary of faith, re-learn logic
but treat it like faith. Thus the Schoolmen
indogmafy plausible maxims,
sit firm and erect in the shade of Lyceum.
Aquinas the only true thinker mourns moanfully.
Science emerges, a novum organon,
a new quest to find what things are,
but old faith, an old cast of mind.
The old school now an archeological find,
remains buried, its questions once answered for all.
But the Germans are not quite convinced,
keep on asking why we are not free
to defy and to blur. After all,
we are protean beings, and know the old stories well.
But what course still remains for those
bred by the ruins of Lyceum?
One looking over the shoulder
to Greek or Medieval or Modern models?
Or one looking forward, which has travelled back,
with a prayer of thanksgiving, a new apprehension
for what every thought must lack?

--

In the East Room, Dionysians revel
agnostically, thrilled to find God
scarcely knowable, free from the Categories at last,
but what darkness stirs, waiting to pounce
on those not yet prepared for the mysteries?