One aspect of this interesting area of thought, which goes beyond the search for objective reality beyond the human realm such as the Forms, is states of consciousness. I think that this was touched on briefly in the thread you had several months ago on Julian Jaynes's, 'The Origins of the Bicameral Mind.' It is interesting how he maintained that ancient people did not necessarily think in terms of the clear distinction between inner and outer reality which we have today.

I also think that there is the issue of stepping into altered states of consciousness. This is touched by in the anthropological understanding of shamanism, but it also linked to what dimensions are believed to exist beyond the three dimensions, including fourth and fifth dimensional reality, and even the idea of parallel universes.

It is possible that states of consciousness can involve stepping into unknown dimensions of consciousness. This is touched upon by Bucke in his, 'Cosmic Consciousness'. His description of the development of specific individuals includes the Buddha and Jesus Christ, but it does include a number of creatives, such as Dante and Walt Whitman.

Of course, we are talking of people who were beyond the experience of most individuals, and the majority can only touch upon such inspiration through the works of these creatives. However, I do believe that the process of creativity, including the writing of poetry relates mostly to subjective experiences but it is interconnected with states of consciousness. The link is probably in the realm of peak experiences, such as described by Abraham Maslow. Sometimes, I think creativity can become mystified through consideration of great works of art, but I believe that it is possible for most human beings to experience some creative 'inspiration', especially in the context of some kind of peak experiences amidst the mundane aspects of daily life.

!! ATTENTION all Physicists !! — Amity

Maxwell was OK, (7 out of ten) with good rhythm and rhyme, but some of the others stunk as poems and as also from being too technical. There are better ways to write philosophical scientific poems. I may have some myself.

Maxwell was OK, (7 out of ten) with good rhythm and rhyme, but some of the others stunk as poems and as also from being too technical. — PoeticUniverse

I liked the Maxwell one best because it was technical. That's what I want from a physicist - poetic physics. But all of them stunk/stank as poems.

I may have some myself. — PoeticUniverse

Well, don't be shy. Sing us some with dance moves :cool:

Did you understand it ?
What did it mean?
I didn't have a clue.
Too dense.
No marks.

Did you understand it ?
What did it mean?
I didn't have a clue.
Too dense.
No marks. — Amity

I sort of understood it. Not enough to want to finish reading the whole poem.

:smile:

My eyes glazed over.
But gave me a bit of insight.
Into my mental capabilities.
No marks for physics.
It turns me off...
As you say, some things leave you cold.
Or are we cold to start with...
Hmmm.
Brain warmth.

I don't write poetry but sometimes if I'm lazy, I write short.

No marks for physics.
It turns me off... — Amity

Physics and "The Tao Te Ching" tell me everything about reality I need to know.

:monkey:

Well, don't be shy. Sing us some with dance moves :cool: — Amity

I wish someone could sing some of my poems and accompany the songs with music, as there are no good apps for that yet… but they are trying to be.

Here's a dance only form a lady who I created. I haven't taught her to sing yet.



A philosophical science poem of mine on a rare subject (of a few that I found):

AFTER THE STARS HAVE GONE—
THE FINAL, SILENT DARK

The Last Chance Saloon

Entropy is always the winner in the end,
When there’s no more energy left to lend;
Meanwhile, we stabilize, in nature’s ways,
Rearranging resources temporarily.

Prelude

Going beyond our very old obsession so vast,
Of how it all began, back in the distant past,
Yet retaining our search for meaning, from that,
We now turn to how will it all end, this and that,
Whether becoming collapsed, expended, or flat.

Is there is some deep meaning in all that?

Yes, for it is there in that future distance,
We’ll find or not the end of our persistence,
Whether or not we are at all forever resistant,

Whether all that was and what was did and done
Will be of any long-lasting benefit to anyone—
Of what destiny awaits, if there ever was one.

Endings are important to us, of what we’re about,
Because we believe that how things turn out
Implies what the beginnings ultimately meant,
Of what or not is our place in the firmament.

As an ambitious species of nurture and nature
We now and have always pointed toward the future,
For, of the three forms of the chimpanzee:
The common chimp, the bonobo, and us, we
Are the only chimp who went beyond the trees…

And more importantly, ever out of Africa freed,
By that exodus, which laid down, indeed,
From that experience, the urge and the need
To move on, exploring, ever planting another seed.

The horizons on Earth sufficed us through time
For many millennia but now the horizons’ climes
Have broadened, through cosmology and physics,
And so they can well inform us of our prospects.

The future matters to us for very basic reasons:
We wish to offset our mortality, our pleasin’s,
To know if humanity’s works for every season
Will be remembered, or lost—all for nothing, even.

The Final, Silent Dark Marches On…

Time hurls a million waves of its displacements
At us, yet we are still here—the replacements.

Time ever gray with age hurls its changes then,
‘Gainst existence’s rock, time and time again,
The entropic seas denuding the sands,
Yet energy is preserved via nature’s wands.

Reminiscence had weathered but could ne’er wither,
For in the mists of time yesteryear yet appeared,
Since, without future, ‘past’ is all they’d have.

Would the prospect of a ‘Big Crunch’ bring on mania,
In an ever more confining claustrophobia?

Seems a better thought, somehow, though no picnic,
But more pleasing if the universe were to be cyclic,
Although then all would still be really crushed,
And forever lost, gone headlong into the rush.

We expect cycles, for all the days and seasons
Embedded this in our ancestors, into our reasons,
Since at least the periodic supplies some rhythm,
A pattern—the rolling hills of lives onward driven.

As for cyclic, endless repetitions, they too
Would seem to revolt more of us than just a few;
As too perhaps would some infinite abyss of time,
Which both grant us neither reason nor rhyme.

Does the drama go on forever, or does it end?
What do the visions of the future portend?
Doesn’t it all have some purpose meant—
A goodly end that all of it to us might it present?

Is our higher mammal time certainly
But of such a short parentheses within eternity?

It’s only a finite time then, which too tends
To horrify so many, as the universe ends,
Such as told by Robert Frost, a name of chill:
In heat or in cold, known as fire or ice, still.

Should we not believe in God since nothing lasts?

Well, if nothing lasts then of what our purpose past?

Is a purpose really required, so constructive,
Or would that really be quite restrictive?

No realm could really be special or sent,
Its becoming being of some specific intent,
For all has arrived as a causeless non-precedent.

Is there anything wrong with the freedom to be,
Anywhere, any how, or any time during eternity?

Should we rail against the law of entropy—
The ‘heat death’ of thermodynamic energy,
The second of its final laws, you see,
Because it would destroy all of history?

There are so many ways for disorder to be
Than any one ordered state specifically.

Would even a heaven on Earth become a misery
If as it might, contain no more novelty?

Must there be an end to our revelry?

Can’t we at least hibernate eternally?
Won’t all matter too last eternally?

Will Shakespeare’s works live on, paternally?

Is this not a Wagnerian struggle for eternity?

Science Can Settle Whether a Last Day
Is Ever Going to Come this Way

Only a decade or so ago, with consternation,
We discovered the universe’s acceleration,
Its expansion even increasing, onto a thin disaster,
The galaxies getting further away ever faster—
Then one last snapshot taken, for all to remember.

The accelerating expansion of the universe’s rafters
Means that the universe will cool even ever faster;
So, any rare forms of the future’s life prolongers
Will have to keep themselves ever more cooler,
Think more slowly, and hibernate ever longer.

One day even the protons will fade away,
Leaving but dark matter, electrons, and positrons.

The Waves of the Ancient Swells
Of Time’s Eroding Swells
Swept Ever On…
 
As Time, now hoary with age,
Yet hurls forth its ashen change,
The charge ever san, pale and colorless,
That force born to summon decay, so endless,
‘Gainst Nature’s Universe, every day.
 
Time and time again, Time feeds all upon,
In its bloodless, white, and waxen way,
But our everlasting rose would not fade,

Its luster even brightening by the day,
Ever unsuccumbing to the sickly, peakèd
State draining drawn Earth’s life away.
 
Entropic seas yet denude the mountains,
Yet our enduring flower never-endingly
Has cast Deathly Time aside, as now,
Ceaselessly somehow thriving on
Toward the hope of the near imperishable,

As beauty’s flame e’er inextinguishable,
Forever celebrated as immutable,
Gaining a seemingly perpetual permanence
From the undying love of our glorious dance.

Yet, everything was moving apart, cooling off,
The big slowdown not really so very far off;
Ultimately, even the black holes of late
And the lightless planets would dissipate.

The primordial soup once so rich and hearty
Will become a thin gruel that can’t serve the party.

One day, every particle will be moving away
From every other particle, so much out of the way
That they won’t even be able to see one another;
Thus, for all intents motion will have ceased forever.

Our spurt of life followed by an infinite stretch
Of dark equilibrium was but the briefest sketch—
A warm and fuzzy stage, so interestingly active,
Whose time relatively was but infinitesimive.

Yet we were there in all our glory,
For whenever else could we have been?

…

In the future, uncounted societies of
Overlapping minds accumulate, with love,
In island redoubts, their preserved data burning

With a vital remembrance, in which, returning,
The past is the present and future, they all reliving
The data, even animating it, and ever altering.

Without any new enrichments, the present and future
Reprise the past in this retreat from external nature.
Their candles would have been near invisible to us—
They enduring by diminishing so as not to exhaust.

They made few new memories, a kind of blind sight,
For whatever realities had ever existed out of sight
Of their own mental structures were now fractured,
And thus not so different from those manufactured.

The Penultimate Part of the Final Dark

An Escalating One-Way Trip
From a Fluke to Oblivion

The majority of the energy
Of the universe is dark today,
Although everything else passes
Through it in every way.

It’s everywhere,
Having a component
That repels its own state,
Which cause the expansion of
The universe to much accelerate.

Dark Energy Matters: The Escalation

We’re on a one way trip from the quantum fluke,
That maximal energy within old Planck’s nook,
Heading toward the oblivion of sparse expansion—
All that we ever loved and knew going to extinction.

They sent message of early warnings to some,
In those castles of illusion, yes, many a one—
That they would face the decay, not so far away,
Of the heavy particles—the ‘proton pause’, one day.

No self-assembled granularity can endure
Forever but must return to the substructure,
And so the lives must all transition, it seems,
From heavier to much lighter regimes,

Although this too would not be permanent—
All destined to be swallowed by the firmament.

We have often asked why some space exists,
Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
All of those finite sparks that light and die.

There were those who endlessly debated
Whether to live in their virtuals unabated
Or to press forwards and outwards, in delirium,
To seek out new localities in the mysterium,

But the pauses of the heavy particles continued,
And so there was nowhere to go for the retinued.

It was much simpler in those days of old
When we thought that universes didn’t go cold,
But that they expanded and then collapsed,
Still destroying all, yet ever giving more to last.

And well before that, once upon a storied time,
We simply made it all up, with tales and rhyme,
In place of any physical observations,
Such as through revealing experimentations.

The past was now a reef of dead accumulation,
A graveyard of various useless information,
Which despite its splendorous beauty
Could not provide for a novel futurity.

The last one of us, born of the sparkness,
Kept a window to the outer darkness…
She looked out from a once brightly
Colored and sparkling inner reality
Into the dark abyss…

There was nothing out there,
All being so lonely and bare—
No more singing of life’s song,
For now everything was gone.

The Final Epilog

There could not have been any specific time,
One that was privileged over any other chime,
Nor any special place, nor any certain form
Arising out of the necessarily causeless realm.

Even the locally specific dates and places past
Of the events’ novel memoirs couldn’t last,
They being writ on water, with no meaning vast,
Disappearing in significance so very fast,
Since it’s only the universals that last.

The protons were now gone from the show,
Having decayed so very long ago
Into positrons—ever canceling the electrons,

And emitting the fleeing light of photons,
There being of course an equal amount
Of protons and electrons in the count.

And of course along with all the protons
Went all of the atomic elements—the end,
All of their forms becoming myth and legend,
As they were still dreamt in night dreams,
Those forms that we once had, so it seemed.

She, as many of a luckily adaptable kind,
Had long since lightened and lighted her mind,
With the dwindling electrons and precious photons—
That beginning light of ancient times growing wan.

Ours had been the only line in the universe,
One that had become sentient, with proto-man first,
The rest of the Cosmos being but a colossal waste,
A foreboding, harsh, and very dangerous place.

She was now the only one left,
Having outlived all of the rest.
The universe was near crumbling away,
Having run out of space, time, and all its sway.

She was dispersing, melting, into the vacuum, lone,
But she held on for another thousand years, alone,
And then she too was gone,
Being the last of the hominid’s song,

Of all that was sapient: the Magnificat,
The composition of Earth’s sweet plot,
The greatest symphony that was ever sown,
It now having faded into the unknown.

From near nothingness our forms became,
And into the same must go our remains.

If the unknown be such, though it’s otherwise;
But if it’s yet called ‘unknown’ then the reply
Is still for sure that we’re free to be, anywise.

If you’ve shed a tear reading here
For both the far and the near and dear
It won’t make their graves green again,
But it’s possible that life could begin again…

Be of Good Cheer—the sullen Month will die,
And a young Moon requite us by and by:
Look how the Old one meagre, bent, and wan
With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky! (—Omar)

Our fruits are of a universal seed
As the yield of All possibility treed,
And siblings elsewhere in the entropic sea
Will also be born of such probability.

The Eternal Return

Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal IS has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to impart its Why.

Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
And now well knows how the bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some like universe,
As those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.

So, as thus, thou lives on yester’s credit line
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl your cup of brew was mixed
Into the state of being that’s called “mine”.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?

The Eternal Saki has thus formed
Trillions of baubles like ours, and will form,
Forevermore—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
Of those universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

When You and I behind the cloak are past
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of one’s approach and departure the All grasps
As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.

Seasonings

Nature springs from winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The trees within the acorns.

Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the summer flower.

Summer wakes from spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the spring’s running.

Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.

Autumn falls as summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of spring.

The smile meets the tear—
Fall’s embers last through December.

Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.

Winter is life cooled over;
Melting snows feed spring waters.

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.)

Your wish to have your poems turned into songs and sung was one of my mum's biggest longings. When I was a child she used to answer ads in music magazines for composers seeking lyricists. She ended up with loads of cassettes full of songs. However, she would have loved for some group to record them and get them on the radio. I don't imagine that your poems would fit into the pop and rock genre, and I think that you prefer more classical music. But, what I am thinking is that rather than just looking for apps it may be more interesting to find some musicians to collaborate with. You don't know what may happen and you might end up creating a new 'Dark Side of the Moon', or some psyched out space rock opera.

Your view of the real-ideal pair is in line with how things are done. — TheMadFool

A perception like this, nowadays, is the virtue of the insane...

I also think that there is the issue of stepping into altered states of consciousness. This is touched by in the anthropological understanding of shamanism, but it also linked to what dimensions are believed to exist beyond the three dimensions, including fourth and fifth dimensional reality, and even the idea of parallel universes. — Jack Cummins

The idea that "concepts" are nothing more than "objects of greater dimensions than ours which we project unto our world, their imperfect forms through metaphysics" is a perception that attracted me a lot in the past, however, over time, I ended up by concluding that such hypotheses are nothing more than pure "conceptual structuring", as there is no way to actually affirm something that needs an episteme-physical theory to actually work, which, according to contemporary human knowledge, is something completely inconceivable.

Anyway, nothing prevents "Love"- the concept of Love - for example - - from being nothing more than a 5th dimensional "circle".

Your view of the real-ideal pair is in line with how things are done.
— TheMadFool

A perception like this, nowadays, is the virtue of the insane... — Gus Lamarch

You disapprove. Why? What I said is congruent to what you've been saying, no? As an example, look at how civil engineers (I just met one outside my office) have a conception of an ideal house - structurally sound, oriented in a way that optimizes natural sunlight, prevailing winds, is aesthetic, and so on - and they use this model/ideal house as a template for all houses they help to design/build. In short, the ideal serves as a direction-finding beacon that guides civil engineers towards the best possible approximation of the perfect house and what comes out of all this is the real house.

An unusually good book on poetry, Creating Poetry, John Drury. — tim wood

Delivered today.
A quick overview and a Dickinson look-up in Index, already impressed. Thanks @tim wood :up: :100:
Drury is so engaging, informative with a great sense of humour.

An example, from Ch IV. Sound - Rhyme p57-59

Slant rhyme

'Emily Dickinson was a pioneer of slant rhyme..." she intentionally avoided the smoother and more usual rhymes"... she pairs 'wake' and 'crack', 'Pearl' and 'School', 'Score' and 'Her'...
Wilfred Owen...in 'Strange Meeting', the story of two enemy soldiers meeting in the underworld rhymes 'escaped' and 'scooped', 'groaned' and 'groined'...
-----
The presence of rhyme does not excuse the absence of imagery...does not compensate for slackness, abstractness, or excessive softness...

...poems on abstract subjects often work better in rhyme or meter, but overuse of abstraction is always a problem.
Who wants to seek his reading pleasure in a sensory deprivation tank ?
-----
In 'Out of Africa. Isak Dinesen describes how the East Africans working in her maize-field loved the sound of rhyme, "laughed at it when it came" and begged her: "Speak again. Speak like rain".

Good rhyme ( as well as good metaphor) often affects us with hilarity; we laugh because we are surprised and pleased - we get it.' — John Drury

There follows a set of exercises, advice and practical tools.
Not quite ready for that yet...

But hey. This book is an eye-opener to all kinds of poetic forms, patterns and traditions with definitions of terms. So good.
I love the humour - the 'sensory deprivation tank'.
I immediately thought of the physics poem but that might be unfair and says more about my ignorance.
If anybody cares to explain and persuade me otherwise - feel free :cool:

Two by Robert Frost, one so short it's done before you've begun. The second best read slowly.


Devotion

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to ocean–
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

------

The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

I have noticed in too many poems online small, deliberate errors. I'm guessing a "branding" by the producer. I read that mapmakers would include small deliberate errors in their maps, to protect their intellectual property. But with poetry?

Does the Haiku technique (economy of words and precision of meaning) somehow imply its own separate metaphysics?

The Hermit

Hermit greeting time
Out for a leisurely stroll
Walking stick in hand.

(Amity, please turn all this into something like a grand opera.) — PoeticUniverse

Amity — Amity

Done yet? Maybe your lute people could do it.

You disapprove. Why? What I said is congruent to what you've been saying, no? — TheMadFool

You got me wrong. I, through the comment you refer to, were making explicit the fact that views like yours, which agree with a position - in this case, of mine - that go against the erroneous "common sense" of the masses.

"I was applauding you"

Does the Haiku technique (economy of words and precision of meaning) somehow imply its own separate metaphysics? — charles ferraro

Most likely, the technique also demonstrates that poetry has its own metaphysics, however, its method of analysis may be totally different from the poetic Sufi method, which I demonstrated in the original post.

The Hermit

Hermit greeting time
Out for a leisurely stroll
Walking stick in hand. — charles ferraro

Reading and rereading the poem you used as an example, it seems to me that the use of the technique of saving words, ends up also making it difficult to deconstruct the poem so that its metaphysical substance becomes evident - in a Sufi reading, obviously -.

The scenario where "possible different poetic analyses, can only work with certain poetic structuring cases" can also, be real.

Is this Haiku, in your opinion, easier to deconstruct?

Demiurge

Imagination
Form giver to nothingness
Godlike in essence.

Or, is this non-Haiku even easier?

Final Harvest

Year after year
He plowed the earth
And planted seeds therein.
'Till, at the end,
They plowed the earth
And planted him therein.

You got me wrong. I, through the comment you refer to, were making explicit the fact that views like yours, which agree with a position - in this case, of mine - that go against the erroneous "common sense" of the masses.

"I was applauding you" — Gus Lamarch

Oh! I misunderstood. Sorry. By the way, how are your views different from Plato's? I ask because your notion of ideals matches Platonic forms and, while you extol the arts, Plato thought differently, accusing, as it were, artists of adding to the confusion by imitating (art) imitations (real) of Platonic forms (ideal).

Done yet? Maybe your lute people could do it. — PoeticUniverse

Sent my spirit searching, searching...
Centuries of songs and places, spanned.
Gaming the galaxy of noughts and crosses.
Lutes lashed, lacking meta-physicality.
The bricolage of baubles and bubbles burst,
Outwards and onwards...
To the finale of the Grand Opera.

Applause and encore ?
Only if you agree.

In Harmony and Amity :sparkle:

Is this Haiku, in your opinion, easier to deconstruct?

Demiurge

Imagination
Form giver to nothingness
Godlike in essence. — charles ferraro

Serious suggestion - Why don't we deconstruct it. Here's my attempt:

The poem is a haiku with the standard 5/7/5 syllable structure. The title, "Demiurge" typically refers to that which created the world. The poem seems to refer to the imagination as the demiurge, which implies, as the poem verifies, that the imagination is God. Or God is the imagination. Actually, it says "Godlike" and "in essence" which means "sort of." "Form giver to nothingness" is a common way of referring to how God created the world.

This is an excerpt from one of my favorite poems. It's the most romantic/Romantic part of a very, very, romantic/Romantic poem.

Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.

First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet ;
'T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, " My painting
Makes me powerful over others."

Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
,And the interpretation, " Listen !
'T is my voice you hear, my singing ! "

Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
" I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion ! "

Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together,
With their hands so clasped together
That they seem in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, " I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes ! "

Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island ;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, " Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me ! "

Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, " Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you ! "

And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle ;
And the image had this meaning :
" Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper ! "

From "Song of Hiawatha" by Longfellow.

Applause and encore ? — Amity

Yes, both, to the fine summary of the Magnificat.

Next, here's one about the decay in energy's quality driving everything:

ALL THAT LIES BETWEEN As Energy

Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,

Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.

We have oft described the causeless—
That which was always never the less,
As well as the beginnings of our quest,
And too have detailed in the rarest of glimpses
The slowing end of all of forever’s chances.

So now we must now turn our attention keen
To all of the action that exists in-between—
All that’s going on and has gone before,
Out to the furthest reaches, ever-more,

For everything that ever happens,
Including life and all our questions,
Meaning every single event ever gone on,
Of both the animate and the non,
Is but from a single theme played upon.

This then is of the simplest analysis of all,
For it heeds mainly just one call—
That of the second law’s dispersion,

The means for each and every occasion,
From the closest to the farthest range—
That which makes anything change.

These changes range from the simple,
Such as a bouncing ball resting still,
Or ice melting that gives up its chill,
To the more complex, such as digestion,

Growth, death, and even reproduction.
There is excessively subtle change as well,
Such as the formations of opinions tell
And the creation or rejections of the will,

And yet all these kinds of changes, of course,
Still become of one simple, common source,
Which is the underlying collapse into chaos—
The destiny of energy’s unmotivated non-purpose.

All that appears to us to be motive and purpose
Is in fact ultimately motiveless, without purpose.
Even aspirations and their achievement’s ways
Have fed on and come about through the decay.

The deepest structure of change is but decay,
Although it’s not the quantity of energy’s say
That causes decay, but the quality, for it strays.

Energy that is localized is potent to effect change,
And in the course of causing change it ranges,
Spreading and becoming chaotically distributed,
Losing its quality but never of its quantity rid.

The key to all this, as we will see,
Is that it goes though stages wee,
And so it doesn’t disperse all at once,
As might one’s paycheck inside of a month.

This harnessed decay results not only for
Civilizations but for all the events going fore
In the world and the universe beyond,

It accounting for all discernible change
Of all that ever gets so rearranged,
For the quality of all this energy kinged
Declines, the universe unwinding, as a spring.

Chaos may temporarily recede,
Quality building up for a need,
As when cathedrals are built and formed,
And when symphonies are performed,

But these are but local deceits
Born of our own conceits,
For deeper in the world of kinds
The spring inescapably unwinds,
Driving its energy away—
As All is being driven by decay.

The quality of energy meant
Is of its dispersal’s extent.
When it is totally precipitate,
It destroys, but when it’s gait
Is geared through chains of events
It can produce civilization’s tenants.

Ultimately, energy naturally,
Spontaneously, and chaotically
Disperses, causing change, irreversibly.

Think of a group of atoms jostling,
At first as a vigorous motion happening
In some corner of the atomic crowd;

They hand on their energy, loud,
Inducing close neighbors to jostle too,
And soon the jostling disperses too—
The irreversible change but the potion
Of the ‘random’, motiveless motion.

And such does hot metal cool, as atoms swirl,
There being so many atoms in the world
Outside it than in the block metal itself
That entropy’s statistics average themselves.

The illusions of purpose lead us to think
That there are reasons, of some motive link,
Why one change occurs and not another,

And even that there are reasons that cover
Specific changes in locations of energy,
The energy choosing to go there, intentionally,

Such as a purpose for a change in structure,
This being as such as the opening of a flower,
Yet this should not be confused with energy
Achieving to be there in that specific bower,

Since at root, of all the power,
Even that of the root of the flower,
That there is the degradation by dispersal,
This being mostly non reversible and universal.

The energy is always still spreading thencely,
Even as some temporarily located density—
An illusion of specific change
In some region rearranged,

But actually it’s just lingering there, discovering,
Until new opportunities arise for exploring,
The consequences but of ‘random’ opportunity,
Beneath which, purpose still vanishes entirely.

Events are the manifestations
Of overriding probability’s instantiations—
Of all of the events of nature, of every sod,
From the bouncing ball to conceptions of gods,
Of even free will, evolution, and all ambition,

For they’re of our simple idea’s elaborations,
Although for the latter stated there
And such for that as warfare
Their intrinsic simplicity is buried more deeply.

And yet though sometimes concealed away,
The spring of all creation is just decay,
The consequence and instruction
Of the natural tendency to corruption.

Love or war become as factions
Through the agency of chemical reactions,
The actions being the chains of reactions,
Whether thinking, doing, or rapt in attention,
For all that happens is of chemical reaction.

At its most rudimentary bottom,
Chemical reactions are rearrangements of atoms,
These being species of molecules
That with perhaps additions and deletions
Then go on to constitute another one, by fate,
Although they sometimes only change shape,

But too can be consumed and torn apart,
Either as a whole or in part, so cruel,
As a source of atoms for another molecule.

Molecules have neither motive nor purpose to act,
Neither an inclination to go on to react
Nor any urge to remain unreacted;
So then why do reactions occur if unacted?

Molecules are but loosely structured
And so they can be easily ruptured,
For reactions may occur if the process energy norm
Is degraded into a more dispersed and chaotic form,

And so as they usually are constantly subject
To the tendency to lose energy, as the abject
Jostling carries it away to the surroundations,
Reactions being misadventure’s transformations,

It then being that some transient arrangements
May suddenly be frozen into permanences
As the energy leaps away to other experiences.

So, molecules are a stage in which the play goes on,
But not so fast that the forms cannot seize upon;

But really, why do molecules have such fragility,
For if their atoms were as tightly bound as nuclei,
Then the universe would have died, being frozen,
Long before the awakening of the forms chosen,

Or if molecules were as totally free to react
Every single time they touched a neighbor’s pact
Then all events would have taken place so rapidly
And so very crazily and haphazardly

That the rich attributes of the world we know
Would not have had the needed time to grow.

Ah, but it is all of the necessitated restraint,
For it ever takes time a scene to paint,
As such as in the unfolding of a leaf,
The endurations for any stepping feat,

As of the emergence of consciousness
And the paused ends of energy’s restlessness:
It’s of the controlled consequence of collapse
Rather than one that’s wholly precipitous.

So now all is known of our heres and nows
Within this parentheses of the eternal boughs,
As well as the why and how of it all has come,
And of our universe’s end, but that others become.

Out of energy’s dispersion and decay of quality
Comes the emergence of growth and complexity.

(The verse lines, being like molecules warmed,
Continually broke apart and reformed
About the rhymes which tried to be non intrusions,
Eventually all flexibly stabilizing to conclusions.)

Two by Robert Frost, one so short it's done before you've begun. The second best read slowly. — tim wood

Again, thanks. I'd never read or listened to either of these poems. I enjoyed them both.
First one. Short and perhaps a 'quickie' like a haiku, capturing a moment's thought. Or a beautiful distillation of what 'Devotion' means to Frost.
Second. Yes, a longer one but just right. And you're right- a slow read like a slow hand, covering a silky smooth line or curve. Love. Will read again...

Unfortunately, I have no great background knowledge or understanding of Frost.
Perhaps you can say more about what these poems meant to him, and to you.

-----

About the book you recommended 'Creating Poetry'. I've been reading the book back to front !
Fascinated by Drury's writing in Ch XI.
Appreciating and drawing inspiration from the the interrelationship among all the arts and sciences: everything that's vividly human

Also in Ch XII - Finishing - with its several senses of finishing.
In 'Failure, Irritations and Difficulties' p195:

He writes that it can be helpful for a poet

' to have enough confidence to be tough on his/her work, to feel at home with 'unsuccess'. One way is to emulate Keats's negative capability,

" that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubt, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason..."
— Drury

I'm curious as to when and why you bought this book. What does poetry mean to you ?
Reading, writing and reflection-wise ?

I have noticed in too many poems online small, deliberate errors. I'm guessing a "branding" by the producer. I read that mapmakers would include small deliberate errors in their maps, to protect their intellectual property. But with poetry? — tim wood

Do you have any examples ? What kind of a 'small deliberate error' would be useful as a 'brand' ?
I have never heard of mapmakers making deliberate mistakes - wouldn't that be dangerous and have a negative effect on their reliability ?
Goodness sake, someone might even write a poem about their misadventure - but who would listen ?

The Hermit

Hermit greeting time
Out for a leisurely stroll
Walking stick in hand.
— charles ferraro

Reading and rereading the poem you used as an example, it seems to me that the use of the technique of saving words, ends up also making it difficult to deconstruct the poem so that its metaphysical substance becomes evident - in a Sufi reading, obviously -. — Gus Lamarch

@charles ferraro
Would be interested to hear your, or others, thoughts on this reply.
In particular, is the haiku technique just about 'saving words' ?
Where does any 'metaphysical substance' lie in a haiku poem ?
Why would anyone want to deconstruct it - as 'in a Sufi reading' ?

Most likely, the technique also demonstrates that poetry has its own metaphysics, however, its method of analysis may be totally different from the poetic Sufi method, which I demonstrated in the original post. — Gus Lamarch

I've asked a few questions and made comments re this so-called 'authentic metaphysics'.
I wonder if there is a similar concern of @Gus Lamarch re what might be considered 'authentic poetry'.
It isn't spelled out as such...but some talk about 'good' or 'real' poetry as if it is something from on high.
Only for superior beings...
Is that right ?