ROSS COGAN studied philosophy, gaining a Ph.D. He has published three poetry collections, Stalin’s Desk (2005) and The Book I Never Wrote (2012), with Oversteps, and Bragr (2018) with Seren. Ross received a Gregory Award in 1999, and has won the Exeter, Frogmore, Cannon Sonnet and Staple prizes, and been placed in others including second in the Troubadour. His poetry has been published in the Guardian, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry London, PN Review, New Welsh Review, Rialto, Acumen, Stand, Orbis and other magazines. A writer and editor, he was Creative Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival from 2010 to 2019
The world as will and idea
“L’histoire conte que le terrible Schopenhauer en était fort amateur de bière. Il jouait aussi de la clarinette, mais c’était peut-être pour embêter ses voisins.” (Jean Verdenal)
Schopenhauer, we’re told, had a great love
of beer. The man who let his mind
slip slyly under the stage curtain, behind
the painted backdrop of ideas,
to where the great undifferentiated ‘all’,
hungry and fierce and cruel,
pulls the levers and unties the ropes
from in the shadows that it also is;
the man who walked at night down certain half-
deserted streets to stand alone in
the blasted wasteland where the grim
indifferent wind whirls and one feels the frozen
hub of the world’s fever; this man
was not above
quenching his resulting thirst
in a long, cool glass of beer.
I like to picture him in a neat,
dark frockcoat, buttoned high,
a crisp, cambric shirt, a sumptuous tie,
surmounted by a simple pin,
reclining in a corner seat
in a favourite bierkeller, his face a lion’s, his thin
hair, grown bald on top, but wild and white
as foam blown from a pint.
And he might say “I who have torn
the veil of Maya, I who have seen
the hard world murder and create,
create and murder, who have felt
the chill of its indifference, I choose
to abjure it all, strangle the ego,
not to disturb the universe.
This renunciation, though, should not
be taken to extend to beer.”
Schopenhauer also learned the flute,
though this, it’s said, may in fact have been
merely to irritate his neighbours[1].
Philosophy
Was it Bacon who said
that a dram of philosophy
led one away from God
but that a yard downed
in one would lead you back?
I took it up, and drunk
on my own warm logic, went
into the world new-armed
with cloth and disinfectant
and a rod for straightening paths
and a saw for solving the worst
puzzles of branch and trunk.
But I got cold. And when,
sober, I turned for home
the pantomime God who’d peered
through clouds of beard, up in
the pastel ceiling where
his wires barely showed
was gone.
And standing round
were older Gods, hawk-faced
ammonite-horned, bright-scaled
bullock-roaring, their eyes
lit with pageants of fire
or hungry as the voids.
Sand
after Günter Eich
Yes, yes, by all means be the sand
in the thirsty machine.
Break open the petrol cap – drill
out the lock if you must –
and slide
the cubes of sugar down inside
the tank. Then, if you will,
sing those obscene
and inconvenient songs and hand
on bad advice. Be unhelpful. Bust
the tools that they kindly provide,
or lose them, or perhaps drop
them – cliché though it is – into the gears.
Randomly rearrange the wires;
release a virus onto the hard
drive, or hide
a dead rat in the pantry. Small fires
in waste baskets can set off smoke sensors and stop
work for hours. Or you could stoke fears
of wars, famine, disease, collapse. Dust will choke a charred
land. Just remember, no do not forget
will you?, that you are the machine
and the machine is you.
As you push back your chair and swill the bright red
Wine around your mouth, as you board the plane
for your holiday in Rome, Athens, Prague or that beach in Spain
as you select your groceries or lover from a screen
as you laugh with friends, tilting your head
back to an angle you know is fetching, as you get
wet on the way to work or saunter through
the snowdrop-drizzled woods, you are the machine
and your thoughts are its.
It’s late. The rich dinner lies in you like ballast and
besides you’re tired. You work too hard.
Slip off your clothes, fold them and place them on the chair,
lay your head on the pillows and slide the clean
sheets up to your chin, and the blankets.
Switch off the bedside light, feel the Egyptian cotton on your bare
soles. Feel also something else. Some sediment washed toward
your heart, precipitated into your veins. This is the sand.
[1] Verdenal was incorrect; Schopenhauer did indeed play the flute pour embêter ses voisins.
ROSS COGAN studied philosophy, gaining a Ph.D. He has published three poetry collections, Stalin’s Desk (2005) and The Book I Never Wrote (2012), with Oversteps, and Bragr (2018) with Seren. Ross received a Gregory Award in 1999, and has won the Exeter, Frogmore, Cannon Sonnet and Staple prizes, and been placed in others including second in the Troubadour. His poetry has been published in the Guardian, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry London, PN Review, New Welsh Review, Rialto, Acumen, Stand, Orbis and other magazines. A writer and editor, he was Creative Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival from 2010 to 2019