Laughing Philosopher / Weeping Philosopher


I

In a goal-less caucus race,
Atoms rush through empty space
Or a lunatic dervish dance
From whose whirling, by mere chance
Order somehow comes to birth -
Sky and stars, and this green earth.
Living forms of every kind,
Till at length emergent mind
Gleams for a little while, and then
Things collapse to chaos again.
Old Democritus, how he laughed -
Scheme that's both sublime and daft.

II

All things flow. The primal fire
Smoulders in a cosmic pyre;
Nothing stays - day after day
Worlds are quite consumed away;
Soul's a momentary spark
Snuffed out in the ambient dark;
Elements to ashes burn,
Live each other's death in turn;
No man jumps in the same river
Twice - what's lost is gone forever.
Heraclitus had to weep -
Loss irrevocable and deep.


John Heath-Stubbs
Galileo's Salad (1996)