I wandered lonely as a cloud
What we think of as the ‘self’
is really just a small part of something else
hidden inside our brains
that floats on high o’er vales and hills
a much larger part of the brain
that actually experiences the world outside
when all at once I saw a crowd,
but that experience makes no sense.
It is just an ongoing chaotic rush
of biochemical data
a host of golden daffodils
that flashes up and fades away.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
fluttering and dancing in the breeze,
what humans think of as their ‘self’
is actually an accessory
continuous as the stars that shine
that tries to make sense of this
chaotic mass of incoming data
and twinkle on the Milky Way
but to do that it has to simplify
and turn that data into stories
stretched in never-ending line
that are sometimes so simplified
along the margin of a bay
that they bear little relationship
to the reality outside.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
It gives people the feeling that they are in control
but that is just a comforting illusion.
The waves beside them danced but they
out-did the sparkling waves in glee.
Human beings live in a simplified dreamworld
and in an age of individualism
A poet could not but be gay
when you can no longer order people about,
in such a jocund company.
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
the only solution is to keep them in that dreamworld
and to make sure the dreamworld is safe and happy
what wealth the show to me had brought
for oft when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood,
the idea of appealing to them rationally
and changing the world…
they flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude
…is pointless.
and then my heart with pleasure fills
and dances with the daffodils.
