Take a book down off the shelf and ask it what it’s got
Numbers, shapes, relations, is it any of that lot?
Or matters plain of fact and being, things you’ve gone and seen?
If it isn’t one or other then there’s nothing in between
Commit it to the flames, then. Let it go up like a torch
It’s nothing but illusion and it never was worth much
So I took it to the others and I burned them where they stood
The thinking thing of Descartes went up nicely, as it should
And Locke’s poor something-I-know-not-what had nothing underneath
And the bishop kept his spirit but he couldn’t say what beneath
Every one of them was holding something no one ever saw
So I lit the whole shelf, one by one, and thought I’d found the law
Then I turned and looked inside myself to find the one who’s looking
And there’s a heat, and there’s a colour, and there’s something in me aching
I can catch a hundred somethings but I never catch the me
Just a bundle of perceptions and there’s no one there to see
Oh well
Just a bundle of perceptions, and there’s nobody in me
I go looking for the self and I stumble on a pain
Then a warmth, then a shadow, then a hunger, then again
Never once the one who’s stumbling. Never once the one who found
Just the tripping and the tumbling and the never-hitting-ground
If I’m nothing but a flowing and a passing and a flux
Then I’ve killed the only thing I had. Oh well. It’s only us
Then I turned and looked inside myself to find the one who’s looking
And there’s a heat, and there’s a colour, and there’s something in me aching
I can catch a hundred somethings but I never catch the me
Just a bundle of perceptions and there’s no one there to see
Oh well
Just a bundle of perceptions, and there’s nobody in me
Now here’s the part I have to say, and I have put it off
I cannot make it work
I’ve got the pieces lying loose and nothing binds them tight
I said the self’s a bundle but I cannot tie the knot
And every road I take to fix it doubles back on me
I plead the privilege of a sceptic, I don’t know what it is
It is a labyrinth. I cannot find the door
I burned the lot of them for less than what I’m holding now
So I’ll set the book aside and I’ll go down and have my dinner
I’ll play a game of backgammon and lose it like a sinner
And in an hour or in three the whole thing will look absurd
Every dreadful thing I’ve proven will be nothing but a word
I’ll come back to it tomorrow and I’ll find it where it lay
There’s no one here to worry. There’s no one here to stay
Oh well
Oh well
Just a bundle of perceptions, and there’s nobody in me
Oh well