Unprovable
Is a theory of instincts not referable
To observation, but parsimony is exculpable,
Squirrel.¹
~
Animal
Is healthy; neurosis cultural.
To disparage motives, a sickle
Universal.
Lethargy
Of reason loses us dignity,
To destroy true anthropology,
Weevilly.*
* My third poem in The Quest, Beauty and the Beast makes the same point:
...So is culture the stifling of nature, not the mark of maturity?
Her response was natural, she runs:
Mine, to read acidity, was unnatural.² Was I then neurotic,
Self-punishing by excessive demands?
Are scientists obsessive-compulsives, exact because neurotic,
And should labs be places for a gang-bang?...
Determinists with their untestable, all-explaining, metaphysical theories,
Who say that whatever I would do,
I would do it because I must (my mental or natural history
Or society causes me to),
Made her fear, by painting the Libido. They abuse
² There was an occasion when I wanted to measure a stream’s pollution load and had motorcycled up to a woman walking her dog at the entrance to a nature reserve, to ask where the stream was. Without saying a word, she ran off - which I found unsettling.