Thinking and the Murder of Thomas Becket

Richard East

CN: violence

Crack! 
Grey mortar labyrinth runs red
and polyphony pours before this knave.

Crimson, faster now. 
The cranial choir gushes melisma
Middle aged doubt Teenage desire A childhood dream. Contrapuntal?

Kneeling Heraclitus beholds the estuary sputter.
‘God’s’ - Parfit creation.
Is the blood of this man or the man of this blood? 

The Science

As the dying Thomas Becket bleeds from the head over the cathedral floor we are confronted by questions regarding what ‘composed’ him. Was it the collection of memories and desires? Were the Beckets that had them coherent with one another? As the penitent killer, possibly changed by his action, kneels in the blood we are pointed towards Derek Parfit’s work arguing that there is no ‘deep fact’ about personal identity and that we are a nebulous connection of will, memory and desire that shifts over time. If that shift is profound enough are we the same person? Was Becket the sum of what was lost in that moment? Is the killer really a different man defined by his present regret and not irretrievably tied to his ambitions before the murder he just committed – if so how are those killers, differing slightly in time, related?

The Poet

Richard is a theoretical physicist living in Rome. In his spare time he attempts to write poetry.

Next poem: United by Kathleen Decker