Long Heraclitus Poems
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...Apologies to Heraclitus and W. H. Auden...
We, defeated by the merest things,
in defeat, endure...for now.
No abiding truth in faith:
origins and destinations
we cannot differentiate,
all random, unguided
by any prescient power;
but, not illogical
(there is no illogic.)
We impose all universal order,
influence what subsequently occurs,
to learn, or not, through endless repetition,
endless failure...and we are
but a current iteration,
here for now -- in constant flux,
defeated by the merest things.
Courage and nobility derived
from continued confrontation,
continued endless struggle,
let us show an affirming flame.
Philosopher, they call me,
Following Pythagoras* of old,
A friend of wisdom it means and
Nothing more.
For years philosophy’s principles
I tried to understand and
For decades her ethics strived
To apply.
Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Heraclitus
My subjects were,
Thus
Faithfully myself devoted to
Their teaching
With
No great success, on my part,
I confess
However, this was not because of
Lack of trying.
And now,
As life’s end, I discern clearer as days,
Are passing by
To my horror, unfortunately, came to realize
That
Although a loyal FRIEND of WISDOM
I have remained to this very day,
WISDOM herself NEVER thought of me
THE SAME WAY!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
11 June 2021
*Pythagoras, Greek philosopher c570-c495 BC, after discovering the Pythagorean Theorem, the Greeks gave him the title of " SOFOS" which means WISE as the custom was at the time to call all men of learning. Pythagoras refused the title and called himself " PHILOS TIS SOFIAS " FRIEND OF WISDOM, because he said WISE was only GOD! Since then the title of Philosopher has been used to this day and every man of learning gets his Ph. D. (Philosophy Degree) which means that he accepts the limits of his knowledge since only GOD knows.
The amount of good and evil
Constant remains
Throughout space and time
There is
No more suffering than good fortune
No more good fortune than suffering
In the universe and in the human soul
This is the law of being,
A constant flux of the two forces
Expression of a single reality in
Perfect balance.
The one cannot exist without the other
Even if we like it or not
Even if we wish it or not,
We have to accept it and live in peace
Or deny it and live in suffering,
That is the will of the universe:
A harmonious unity of the two opponents
Based on collaboration and coexistence
Of each individual part
For
The whole to be maintained
Under
The watchful eye of the
Universal justice!*
(c) Demetrios Trifiatis
15 November 2016
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*Old Testament Isaiah 45: 5,6,7. KJV
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5: I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me : I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.
6: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else.
7: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
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** Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, sixth century B.C., (Kirk, Raven, 209) “To God all things are beautiful and good and just but men suppose some things to be just and others unjust!"
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" There is not enough love and goodness in the world to give any of it away to imaginary beings. " *
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, 1844-1900
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No, dear Friedrich,
God is not an imaginary being
But
The most real of beings to whom all other beings owe
Their existence.
He is omnipresent and omnipotent and manifests himself in
Our hearts in the form of love.
Now,
Since love is from God, it follows that love is divine, and as
Such it is infinite.
As we very well know from mathematics, the infinite divided by any given number gives us infinite
Thus
Dearest, Mr. Nietzsche, love remains intact, no matter how many parts
We cut it into
For that reason,
You should never worry that there would not be enough love and
Goodness in the world to go around.
One more thing, my knowledgeable friend:
Love is never wasted because it comes from God and whatever
Comes from God, is eternally useful!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
29 June 2021
* Friedrich Nietzsche, is one of the philosophers that I admired and wanted to write my Ph. D thesis on his philosophy, however, taking into account his views on God and on our religion-an example of which we see in the above quotation - I wrote my thesis on the philosophy of the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, 544- 480 BC. Paraphrasing, Shakespear's Ceaser I say that: " It is not that I do not love Nietzsche but I love my God more. "
Imagine that someone wants to argue against the existence of air
All the while breathing in air
The Catholics have the Mitered Buffoon
They say Protestants have the “Paper Pope” too
Immanuel Kant said you can’t bring the noumenal and phenomenal together
And it was for duty’s sake that we honor God, or whether
Rene Descartes says I doubt therefore I must exist to do the doubting
Akin to intellectual touting
Friedrich Nietzsche said we can’t give up God because we believe in
laws of grammar
God’s anvil has exhausted many a hammer
David Hume came to skepticism over the induction principle
Bertrand Russell said the same thing
Only Cornelius Van Til could say that the unbeliever is like a child
sitting on his father’s lap
Can reach up and slap his father’s face
It is by God’s common grace that the unbeliever
can sit on God’s lap reach up and infantilely slap His face
The intellectual picture and metaphor
Is in Christ who died for a Whore
Heraclitus and Zeno can consider points in a stream not the same in time
Or arrows that have antecedent range each and every time
Copernicus and Kepler (even Aristarchus) are skewing heliocentricity
Why wasn’t Ptolemy or Lucretius given verticity
All today’s G.O.A.T.’s can buy their fame
They won’t walk with the sheep on the last day
John Lennon said it out loud imagine there’s no heaven
We can equally posit imagine there is no Lennon
The Auburn Affirmation could only deny Christ’s deity
Jean Paul Sartre could only collar the Holy Spirit and throw Him out
Wittgenstein could only show disgust in the ubiquity of God’s judgment
on him
Unless they were breathing God’s air
And it’s the battling against the Holy Spirit’s work that is the unforgivable sin
Matthew asked this author
“How can you hate someone you don’t believe in?”
The ancient philosopher Heraclitus astutely said…on the banks of a river in Babylon…”You cannot step into the same river twice…for the waters are continually flowing on.”
I think that also works for any step we take in life…with each step perhaps we get a little bolder…at the very least with every step…we’ve grown another step older.
Perhaps that’s why we love our morning walks…to see nature’s changing beauty on display…to try and find the subtle changes today…from yesterday.
Changes in the sky, in the trees, in us as we walk along the street
in the clouds, in the ocean, in the animals, in the people whom we meet.
Every day we start out feeling like children on Christmas…anticipating a surprise…and every day we find them…with our one-day older eyes.
We don’t have a choice the way life moves…the way things change subtly from day to day…and as we take our walk each morning…we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Back in times when I travelled
I didn't have to be crazy brave
To book a room in a hotel or a seat on a plane
Now politicians have become worried too much
They see every trip as a scam
They think every visitor intends to stay forever in their great countries
Each traveller can be a colonist
Or a freeloader, burdening the economy.
Good job I don't have to go anywhere
The moving era of seeing the world is over
My travels disprove Heraclitus' theory
Neither the river, nor the sea, nor the ocean have changed
Since I swam in them, and I haven't changed either.
I'm exactly the same on bus 15 as I am on bus 94
All the places I’ve seen didn’t change me a bit,
I’ve nothing to regret or to rejoice about.
My little secret is that I don't distinguish countries anymore
With their nationalities supposedly expressing something
They used to consider as special.
I turn on youtube and travel with a sound off
Watching the watchers films on a regular basis.
I don’t need to present passport, I don’t need to have a nationality
I am not a country, nor a nationality, nor part of either.
I am simply an individual belonging to the human race.
This sparse information is sufficient for any biography
That no one would bother to write.
It’s a hard, hard thing to conceal
When you live in fear of ‘the real’
A terrible thing is to feel
When you’re a wheel within a wheel
I look in your bright blue eyes
For a moment, I’m tantalized
The pupil darts back into grey
Well what is the shade of today
Under the same old sun
The Same meaning for everyone
But there was a time when it wasn’t
The center of everything
When there were circles up in Heaven,
We were frozen by them forever
Depart from the insidious “Never”
Control our own flow together
or just vermin underneath weather
Let me taste of this world
Its sweet delights, I must unfurl
Tantalus of Twenty-nineteen
Break this clockwork machine
Back in the Middle Ages,
The days were unbreakable cages
An eternity of rigid ruin
Stone walls and unthinkable doom
Thanks for these changes,
Heraclitus
Thanks for bestowing
a window inside us
FRIEND of WISDOM
Philosopher, they call me,
Following Pythagoras of old,
A friend of wisdom it means and
Nothing more.
For years philosophy’s principles
I tried to understand and
For decades her ethics strived
To apply
Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Heraclitus
My subjects were, thus
Faithfully devoted to
Their teaching
With no success, I confess
From my part
But not because of a lack
Of trying
And now,
That my life's end, I discern clearer
By the day
To my horror came to realize
That although loyal a FRIEND of WISDOM
I have remained to this day
WISDOM herself NEVER thought of me
THE SAME WAY!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
13 January 2013
A poem is not a logically coherent snapshot of consciousness; rather, poetry testifies to a breach of established logical conventions, offering a new perspective. This perspective reveals certain unspecified meanings that can only emerge through poetry. A poem should not be read as some sort of autobiographical document. On the contrary, an honest poem challenges the notion of documentary accuracy; it is almost always an imprint of complex reflections on memory, an event or events, and the musings of the subconscious—musings that are not obvious to the author—and this entire ensemble of meanings emerges at a specific moment and is never repeated thereafter. Or rather, the moment appears only to never appear again. There are no copies, poetry asserts; we cannot halt a moment in time to calmly reproduce the very same action in the very same state of consciousness. Most likely, the river seen by Heraclitus would have remained the same without poetry. In constant change, there is neither truth nor falsehood – there is simply a given reality as it reveals itself to the poet’s keen attention. After all, one might well fail to notice any changes at all – indeed, it is probably safer to perceive reality in this way. And there is no error on the part of the observer here. There are no rules. The play of time shifts with every moment spent within oneself and in the outside world, but we are under no rule to detect these changes. And what if some people do not change? – then their objects, too, remain unchanged. The parade of eternal entities is always somewhere nearby, sometimes closer than one might wish. But we are under no obligation to take part in this parade. On the other hand, we owe no debt for missed changes; little depends on us, for we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that we are the masters of our own destinies. Noticing what the so-called ‘others’ fail to notice is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage. It is simply a peculiarity of perception that brings comfort to the perceiver. It is rather like zooming in with a built-in camera – would be ridiculous to think that the camera acquires a soul the moment it zooms in on a subject.