Catalogue This as One More Hypothesis on the State of Things

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Catalogue This as One More Hypothesis on the State of Things

The facts have long since been determined
on the cosmic playing field, but discontent,
the sweating players still pose their postulations 
on the underlying nature of the game, 
refusing to accept a premise predefined.

‘The charged perplexities,’ they claim, 
‘can never be simplistically reduced
to footnote parentheticals attempting to 
explain authorial intent,’ or put
mathematically, a poem with the answer set

as X is just at heart an algebraic equation,
not a poem. It doesn’t take a mathematician, 
however, to see that an inability to not just solve 
a problem, but even just to adequately prove
the mere existence of a possible solution,

could drive a person to this bleak conclusion
on the state of knowing, so can we really blame
the mystics in their leather chairs? But surely on 
the other hand, a boy petitioning for lunch 
who throws away the turkey sandwich 

parceled in his lunchbox is a fool—so we are back 
to where we started off, full circle, the facts
existing somewhere in the bylaws of the universe, 
interpretation of those bylaws left the work
of the tired few who really care, the ones who stand

outside with eyes turned upwards in the whisper night. 
            But do not feel convicted, though, for here I sit, 
as you, exactly opposite to them: eyes downward in the light
            of a kitchen lamp. So together let us simply trust,
or hope at least, they’re finding more tangible conclusions than this.

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