What’s your ‘substance’, Aristotle, pray? - <br />that in your book On Metaphysics, you <br />should feel the need to look at ‘being’ more <br />than Plato said of soul? How ‘know thyself’? <br /> <br />You focus your so glorious mind, O sage, <br />on what confronts us in our human state; <br />hoping that from there, all will disclose <br />itself; and so you seek to formulate: <br /> <br />in Book Four, Chapter Two, acutely list <br />four ways, four meanings, of the Greek as used; <br />to us, they’re more apparent grammar-wise: <br />‘being’ as noun, verb, adverb, adjective… <br /> <br />you ultimately choose the languaged thing: <br />nouned as existence, substance - ‘ousia’; <br /> <br />no wonder Shakespeare took you up on that; <br />asking as he did, God’s self in human form <br />what were the essence of that insubstantial <br />substance that the world’s whole being holds: <br /> <br />and out from all these cloudy worlds of thought - <br />it’s ‘constancy’ in godly human heart.. <br /> <br />I wonder, Aristotle, if Will’s search <br />to see the One that’s constant in the All <br />would satisfy your subtle Grecian mind? <br /> <br />or, in Creation’s grammar as it lives, <br />do active verbs precede substantive nouns? <br />And do we know our godly self more true, <br />as constant in ourselves, in Being Now? <br /> <br />* <br /> <br />[For Pete, who asked]<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-is-your-substance/
