As a literal phemomenon, Death is fearful.
As paradox, an antidote to fear.
As life in death, it focuses on life.
As something absurd, one must cope with it,
Edmund Husserl or Viktor Frankl’ll help;
If literal ’n figural, generates fear ’n hope,
As “cowards die many times ’fore their deaths.”
If cyclic, it mitigates much of fear,
If linear, leads to dread—life after death:
Go to Edmund Husserl and he will help.
Thus, hacked to death, dear Death, by perceivers;
But when the worst comes to the worst, I quit!
***
When I am in pain,
My ego would be the first to leave,
As rats would a sinking ship;
The greater the pain the faster it leaves!
My drives get ready to play a masochistic role.
All philosophers, Cosmologists,
Ontologists, Monists, Dualists, Pluralists,
Eschatologists, Epistemologists et al
Hastily retreat, like true fair-weather friends,
Except Kierkegaard and his lieutenants,
Edmund Husserl and Viktor Frankl: they
Stand by me; help me, first of all,
To see meaning in the situation
Where there is apparently none.
The pain starts mitigating.
The triumvirs prompt me to be positive
And do things that I can— in the circumstances,
Ignoring things I cannot possibly do or undo.
Then I find my other companions,
Knowledge, Reason, Experience, etc.,
Slowly joining hands and doing their bit.
Thank God, there is a Kierkegaard!
— Ram, R. V.
Published in The Creative Collective Anthology
Series 2, Graldine Taylor, Ed. Amazon, 2017
Whether you’re on the side of Love—
With Buddha, Sankara and Husserl,
Or on the side of Suspicion—
With Nietzsche, Freud and Bloom,
The principle of complementarity
Works for you,
As for Paul Ricœur
And for Niels Bohr.
You’re a participant observer,
Influencing the world,
Like the physicist,
Influencing the behavior of quanta,
Like the girl in a glass chamber,
Influencing the behavior
Of the vipers and cobras around,
Like the deconstructionist,
Influencing the behavior of the sign.
— Ram, R. V.
Is it a new phenomenon,
Known to the world
Through Beckett and Camus?
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean.
Oedipus, Bhartrhari, Buddha—all,
Over a period of intense suffering,
Learnt to cope with it,
Each resorting to a different praxis.
King Dasaratha perhaps thought
He knew—until a moment came,
When no knowledge,
No cut-and-dried theory,
No ready-made solution
Could possibly help.
He succumbed.
Kierkegaard could see.
Husserl could show.
Eliot could feel.
Frankl could cope with.
Christ had known.
— R. V. Ram
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