the problem of consciousness

Aristotelian teleology
presuming ends then making up a cause
kept Europe rapt for twenty centuries
despite what seemed irreparable flaws
Spinoza made the case (and so got shunned)
by those too frightened to think such a thought
that we should start with how the thing's begun
and reason from what is to find the ought
but Heisenberg tossed cause away as well
and knocked the clockwork cosmos to the ground
an edifice that spanned Heaven and Hell
constructed on foundations so unsound
we're left in so absurd a universe
to contemplate if consciousness is curse