To Iris Murdoch Poem by Rob Dyer

You lectured bewilderingly on Reasons,
'Here ends my seventh lecture, ' randomly,
challenging all our categoric epistêmê.

Deconstructing Wittgenstein you taught
there is no divide between the heart and mind.
From an infinite array der Intensitäten -
with the rhetoric of particulars we call
identity, Intention, self-indulgent, self-creative
(piercing, animating the body without organs,
so Guattari would later say, he followed you) -
comes each prompt spontaneous answered Why?

Had I known how to be a groupie in 1956
I would have haunted your lecture door,
sought autographs.
Instead I sat on a carousel of love,
entrammeled by every brilliant light.
How I laughed and cried to fly
on your swift wings from whyless fact
to see the postured reasons each
gives to the self to match that careful me.

I dance still spun by your ever curving mind
that would not rest in truth or fantasy.
You sent me out exploring other minds,
a roving Haldane of the answers others gave,
to listen why each chose to answer so.