A Poem Inspired by Stoic Physics (1999)

Note: while composed in England in 1999, this poem was first published on 17 August 2024, on my Substack newsletter, The traveller’s Literary Supplicant.

 

God is nature is fate is reason

By Christopher Deliso (1999)

 

There is no accidental motion;

Causes account for and causes create

Fixed things and moving, attest their cohesion;

And so the staunch Stoic dictum.

 

A rock does not from gravity fall, but

Plunging fulfills its existence. Nature

Has sewn its own secret cause, and knows

To not weave a cylinder.

 

Yet there is room in this world for other rocks, aware

Of gravitational force, and they fall, having

Learned to resemble less rocks.

 

There are innumerable worlds, each distinct

From the rest; we know this from Zeno,

Cleanthes, Chrysippus. They posit the cosmos

Repeats, recurs; that time, the measure of motion is like

The line captivating a fish hook, that

Which can be outspun and inreeled again.

 

There are worlds that collide, and others that merge

And some that resolve into fire;

There are causes for rocks, and reasons for motion,

And a Chrysippus who refutes this doctrine entire;

And yet another ‘Chrysippus,’ name signifying

Only the blade of a knife.