Platonist's Saturday Morning Mischief: On Lenin’s Conspectus on the History of Philosophy

On Lenin’s Conspectus on the History of Philosophy

To understand is to move

Through the notations

With a good ear and soul,

And they are like a necklace

Made of knots, nights and nots,

Which, in Yes, together agree.

In Aristotle Achilles is bound

To overtake Zeno’s tortoise

By “overstepping the limit”

For he and Hegel and Lenin

Do gravely mistake

That the halves are haves

—the limit’s frontier.

And motion is

Change and thought,

Which is mean

To the meaning of its own.

It is the Presence

Punctually punctured

By absence that moves,

Exchanging one thought

For many unthoughts,

In which the Presence

Stays over us, passed,

Overlooked and concealed.

And so thoughts’ unthoughts

Do thus keep us moved,

Changed and apart

Unlike the tortoise,

The old and slow,

Which does not think it knows

What it does not know.

Yet like the note

The arrow too is flying,

But the soul is bound

To return

Like a poem or a song

Which only she can

Draw from you,

Create or compose.

For the error is

In assuming the Presence

Is a separate me and now or time

As if one note only

Were music too

And separate from the soul.