‘Physics’ and “Philosophy’ Rhyme (poem)

(by Daniel R. Jones)

All writing is the reduction of the natural world.
   which is to say
The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao.
   which is to say
The mere observation of a phenomenon
inevitably changes that phenomenon.
   which is to say
The first human to hunch over a tablet
cut-reed stylus in hand,
deigning to set the Universe
into writing on damp clay–

already, he’d lost something in translation. 
If the brain of Aldous Huxley,
brilliant though it may have been,
called itself a “reducing valve,”
how much more his hand with its pen!
So ever since, philosophy of aesthetics
students endlessly pick each other apart,
chiding one another over which
parts of reality they inevitably left out.