Andrew Baker

Epitaph of Reason


Lords of logic preach to your converted minority: Rise up!

Flail despairing whip of reason at unwitting multitude.
Pathetic cowerer. Dogmatic knower.

As well scourge yourself dark heart, seeker of answers,
shambling feet shackled by uncertainty.

You hide bleak humanity under veneer mask of rationality.
You.

Moment.

Two heaving monsters rear, engorged yet ravenous,
mouths gaping, cavernous and silent, wet red.
Reason and unreason, polarised yet proud,
unrecognisably grotesque to ancients, even themselves.

Look. Look!
Hapless, separate, yet linked by human frailty.

Pause. What then?
Philosophy: ethereal bridge between battle-weary combatants!
Not too late.

Too late for reason.
Eternally condemned, reach again, Grecian stoic, for hemlock-tainted cup.
Perhaps on paralysed final breath you will learn history's only lesson.

Transcend.
Hold boldly aloft the shining talisman of human nothingness.
Monsters merge, to know the world.