This is a scattered catalogue of things that countless seers
have thought about consistently for some two thousand years.
If yonder table does exist or if it be illusion;
or if perception does beguile and end us in confusion;
or if our senses after all are really quite reliable;
provided we do not transcend the clearly verifiable
If Plato’s heaven does exist — away, afar, apart;
if old Achilles in his race can find a way to start;
if Time has moments infinite and be a steady flow;
whose undivided unity knows neither fast nor slow;
if all ideas in the end are fleeting and are mental;
or if our knowledge lacks a base profound and transcendental.
If Tarski solved the problem of the Cretan who had lied;
if sceptics stare tomatoes down to see the other side;
if Hegel caught the essence of the Master and the Slave;
and Russell found a barber who both could and could not shave;
if all of our experience, of itches and of pains
is nothing but a passing state of our respective brains . . .
But after all the arguing — the claim and counter-claim,
the plight of us philosophers is eternally the same.
For wise men still give answers — the sceptics still cause doubt,
and, even after Wittgenstein, the fly cannot get out.