Aetiology

by Robert Dawson

George Garrard, A Marmoset in Three Attitudes, 1793

If poets really are the world’s unacknowledged legislators, we should do more to keep the atheistic ones (Shelley, Robert Dawson) out of mischief. Shelley had libertinism and early death. Dawson has the musician’s life, but even that can’t remove the hazard of encountering a hapless magazine editor bent on converting him. Corresponding with Bobby has taught me that, although he is wrong about almost every question of spiritual significance, he is always entertainingly wrong. “Error has no rights”? Agony takes a more liberal view, and you are free, for good or ill, to enjoy this simian appendix to our e-epistolary scherzo. - SH

In the beginning was the Name

and the Name was Bobby,

the name I didn’t call myself

but others called me.

As a babe I knew my name

meant me to them.

Big deal! Any lapdog

knows as much.

Turns out marmosets have names –

phee calls, whistles --

that ask the whereabouts

of  marmosetski buddies.

Dolphins whistle, elephants rumble

the same where are you

to designated conspecifics

and get the same reply:

I am where I am.

It’s clear as mud! If I know where

I am, I must know THAT I am.

Such a short step from Eve’s apple

to the knowledge of the Trinity

of Evolution: Predation, Sex, Death!

I am that I am said the Burning Bush.

Dude! That’s what we all say!

Descartes was extraneous!

Cogito ergo sum is ex post facto.

You know I am or you wouldn’t bother

to whistle for me.

In the beginning was the Word.