Imagine the dartboard

Without any bullseye

Such that each darter

Assigns highest score

To whichever sector

Catches his dart

Here is teleology

Of end-justifies-means

Consequentialism

Passing as morality

In the supple imposture

Of ethics by minds

Unwilling to accept

Any codified judgment

Of utterly right

Or utterly wrong

Which is to say minds

With no ethics at all

the old Jacobin
shook the foundations
eighteen centuries in their accretion
they collapsed under force
of his pounding critique
of accepted pure reason

then he rebuilt them strong
where they still stand erect
on progenitive, perceptive
practical reason
autonomous
in yield of morality

he achieved revolution
some measured Copernican
fixing man’s mind
as the sun-centered point
for ineluctable orbit
of ethical knowledge

he fused metaphysics
with morals in his blunt
categorical imperative
for judging motivation
and gauging the truth
of virtue in action

as champion of civil liberties
he ushered embrace of
constitutional means
to self-ruling republics
by the then-breaking wave
of enlightenment

he still shores schools of ethics,
metaphysics, theology,
logic, epistemology,
even his critics are forced
to describe what’s non-Kantian
about their own precepts

I confess being smitten
with this sociable prodigy
loved by his students
respected by colleagues
his legacy…

Splendid medieval hamlets
Cling precarious purchase
On sheer basalt cliffs
Vesuvian vault-thrusted
Towers where Aeolus
Dwelled wielding winds
To massage great Poseidon’s
Deep emerald sea

Splendid medieval hamlets
Raised from classical bones
Of the martial colonial
Romans and Greeks
Upon tiers carved and laid
In Etruscan prehistory
Tyrrhenian vistas

Washed in wonder and woe
Splendid medieval hamlets
Implausibly graceful
Link outcrops of blackrock
Like mutely stoned necklets
Chased with chalky pastels
Terracotta tiled rooftops
Cascade tumbling tandems
Onto throats of warm beach

Splendid medieval hamlets
Cobbled ribbons of road curl
Round lush gardened quarters
Through ruins and villas
Where quaint lives are led
Beneath color-splashed canopies
Iron-pole pitched
To shade azure skies

Splendid medieval hamlets
Harbors bristling with sail-masts
Snug crescentine havens
Yachts of sensuous form
Manned by uniformed crews
Nod patrician in moorage
While the wakes of teak speedboats
Slap quarry-stone quays

Splendid medieval hamlets
Rich aromas drop sweetness