Descartes on the lost art of change
They fear their own flight --
Squeezed between hard reason
and uncertain circumstance
rush gales of forced changes
that fling them, unwilling, aloft
as they cling, still,
to the strings they thought they once held.
Regrets, and the melancholy
of unfulfilled wishes
won't change a horizon's clear silence,
no matter the rise and thin fall of our structures.
Worn smooth by their lives' passing events
they form matte artifacts, eloquent silence,
in the art of suffering.
© Jon Bohrn (2000)

 

Descartes, René, 1596-1650, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Only one thing cannot be doubted: doubt itself. Therefore, the doubter must exist. This is the kernel of his famous assertion Cogito, ergo sum [I think, therefore I am].

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