Between the Kingdoms of Beginnings & Ends
(after Immanuel Kant & David Cameron)

We must return the principle
of free movement to what is reasonable.

If only we dwelt wholly in the intelligible world
we’d possess a perfectly free, autonomous will

Yet here in The Kingdom of Beginnings
each of us sit in a car of a ghost train
driven by the pulse of a vegetable desire
to thrive, to multiply at the expense of all

and ask, “Daddy, are those skeletons real?”

During the ride we come to realize
our sensible selves only through simulations,
assuming the world is governed by natural laws,
chained to the track of cause and effect.

There is a need to tackle free movement abuse.
We must return the principle of free movement
to what is reasonable.

But a chair is an object in the phenomenal world
on which to sit or on which not to sit –

I’ve no idea what it is in the noumenal world,
a table, a small shelf for spare books, firewood,
a step on which to stand to fit a light bulb?

But is it an act of moral freedom to sit in this chair
if you’re work weary and your legs are sore?

Or is it a true act of freedom to sit in that chair
in the phenomenal world only without
the natural desire to rest, being certain you
lack any pre-causal imperative to do so?

and ask, “Daddy, am I but a ghost of the past?”

Yet here in the Kingdom of Ends
we are all heavenly bodies pirouetting
on the tiptoe of one foot balanced on the head
of a noumenal pin, in sheer control of our will

free from the critical imperative or desire
to tackle free movement abuse.

Bob Beagrie  lives in Middlesbrough, has published five collections of poetry to date and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University.