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Where the house is cold and empty and the garden’s overgrown, They are there. Where the letters lie unopened by a disconnected phone, They are there. Where your footsteps echo strangely on each moonlit cobblestone, Where a shadow streams behind you but the shadow’s not your own, You may think the world’s your oyster but it’s bone, bone, bone: They are there, they are there, they are there.
They can parse a Latin sentence; they’re as learned as Plotinus, They are there. They’re as sharp as Ockham’s razor, they’re as subtle as Aquinas, They are there. They define us and refine us with their beta-query-minus, They’re the wall-constructing Emperors of undiscovered Chinas,. They confine us, then malign us, in the end they undermine us, They are there, they are there, they are there.
They assume it as an impost or they take it as a toll, They are there. The contractors grant them all that they incontinently stole They are there. They will shrivel your ambition with their quality control, They will desiccate your passion, then eviscerate your soul, Wring your life out like a sponge and stuff your body down a hole, They are there, they are there, they are there.
In the desert of your dreaming they are humped behind the dunes, They are there. On the undiscovered planet with its seven circling moons, They are there. They are ticking all the boxes, making sure you eat your prunes, They are sending secret messages by helium balloons, They are humming Bach cantatas, they are playing looney tunes, They are there, they are there, they are there
They are there, they are there like a whisper on the air, They are there. They are slippery and soapy with our hope and our despair, They are there. So it’s idle if we bridle or pretend we never care, If the questions are superfluous and the marking isn’t fair, For we know they’re going to get us, we just don’t know when or where, They are there, they are there, they are there.
I entered this sonnet for a competition for an Auden parody and won. It wasn’t written as a parody, but does sound like Auden, don’t you think? The Bentley was originally a Volvo, a very un-Audenish car.
A bloody butler cycling by a lake, A pallid lake surrounded by green willow, A Balkan princess murdered by mistake, Three Staunton chessmen left upon her pillow, The puzzle of her single sapphire earring, The bungled hold-up at the discotheque, The abandoned Bentley burning in a clearing, The Hognose viper coiled about her neck: Each problem posits a unique solution, Each boil requires a dedicated lancer, Deft fingers must tease out each convolution, Unlike real life there has to be an answer, A special key to fit each special door; Spool up the string and find your Minotaur.
Michael Oakeshott is just the sort of obscurantist conservative philosopher likely to appeal to reactionary, crypto-fascist old stick-in-the-muds like me. Besides, he quotes poetry—people like Wordsworth and Housman.
An Austrian chap in the Balkans, a prudent And sensible Archduke, got shot by a student, This Serbian student called Gavrilo Princip. Shot him and his wife And it led to more strife, All caused by this Gavrilo Princip. So the century starts with this Austrian bloke shot. And what was the upshot? The upshot was Oakeshott.
John Stuart Mill, he’s a liberal feller With liberal hat and liberal umbrella, He votes for the vote for all rational people. More long-headed chaps, (From Oxbridge perhaps), They get two votes. These rational people March off to World War—there are millions of folk shot. And what was the upshot? The upshot was Oakeshott.
George Bernard Shaw wears a Socialist beard, He designs his own clothes and they look pretty weird, He‘s as bright as a button and doesn’t like losing. He cares for his health With his personal wealth So he doesn’t do shagging or boozing, Or smoking, or doping—no smack and no coke shot. Yet what was the upshot? The upshot was Oakeshott.
Up out of the void pedals Signalman Freud. If you value your head he’s a man to avoid, As he whirrs through the streets and the woods of Vienna, It’s Ziggy the Kid On the trail of the Id Through the shadowy woods of Vienna: He’s your Psych-on-a-bike, he’s your fangs-and-a-cloak-shot So what was the upshot? The upshot was Oakeshott.
And with Oakeshott the upshot it’s time for more buckshot. Political planners are fresh out of luck, shot To hell—and the smell of their managed economy: Plans and proposals That stink in your noseholes, Are certain to damage your bonhomie! Then those greasy deceptions, those mirrors-and-smoke shots Pan out to a croak-shot. THE UPSHOT IS OAKESHOTT.
All the facts are true. I found them on the internet, most of them in an article by the philosopher Anthony Quinton, so they must be.
Socrates, tried for corrupting young people, was sentenced to death by the state. Giordano Bruno was burned by the Catholic Church—a most horrible fate! Seneca stoically opened a vein when he finally quarrelled with Nero. Bonhoeffer said he was timid by nature, but faced up to death like a hero. Viennese Schlick was shot dead by a mad Nazi student whose thesis he ploughed. Pagan Hypatia, so learned and witty, got stoned by a Christian crowd. Yet, by and large, and it’s proven statistically, incontrovertibly proven statistically life does philosophers proud.
Poor Gödel was fearful of poison and starved, having lived all his life rather prissily. Empedocles, much more intrepid, jumped into a smoking volcano in Sicily. Gentle Pythagoras died in a fire, or a battle, according to source. Whewell, the polymath Master of Trinity, died when he fell off his horse. Rational Condorcet, imprisoned by Robespierre, was probably killed in his cell. Atheist Lucretius (say Christians) took sex pills, went mad and lies burning in Hell. But in the main you would have to admit, when you’re faced with the evidence, bound to admit, most philosophers do very well.
Shpet, the idealist phenomenologist, perished through Stalinist thuggery. Montague died at the hands of a boy he procured for the purpose of buggery Bacon caught cold stuffing snow in a chicken and ended with scarcely a sniff. Jevons was drowned, and Protagoras shipwrecked.. Herbrand fell off a cliff. More and Boethius took the king’s shilling and paid in the end with their heads. Giovanni Gentile who praised Mussolini was slaughtered by partisan Reds. Still, for the most part, as might be expected, in all probability should be expected, philosophers die in their beds.
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