Sedition
No-one, after all this time, surely could
deny
Plato was wise; after all, this ugly
old man with the nose of a broken
pugilist smudged against his face, and
a mind tainted by worship of his very
own genius, that inner voice which spoke
to
them of beauty, justice and the body
Politic; not to mention harmony
among the spheres.
I heard that once he and his friends went
out
and bought a body slave, well known to
them,
despite the gossiping, of which you've
heard
unless you are too nice to listen to
such things and pass them on for, after
all,
when Plato wrote of love immaculate,
most high and noble, and of single souls
in
twain who search the broad world for their
other half, he spoke as man to man - well
never
mind the thought, too mainstream to occasion
comment in his classic time, but really
when you think it was a group of men, and
this a famous prostitute - you can't but
wonder - 'couldn't' rather - and then,
how many
saw the unenslaved lad walk into a
business made for him, embrace philosophy
and some deep thread of virtue given by
his freedom and the men who hocked their
place to do so?
You will of course remember well his death,
that this wise Plato died, and died quietly
in disciplined obedience,
with gentle discourse on the after life:
died of a legal drug legally ad-
ministered, after a trial in which he
chose, quite unaccountably, some freedom
most
unusual and meant to give a voice to
What? His own choice though, to bridle
common
sense with inner wisdom and his knowing
genius, the secret voice of God blasphem
-ing gods whose images of decent unexamined
routine sacrifice and deep struck thought
were
well offended; so to die,
strike one to the middle man unseen,
driving the black market while our hero
Plato was corrupting youth - dabbling their
new mind's purity in reason so he
got what he deserved; for after all he
dreamed and wrote a perfect city and a
perfect world, perfectly entyrannized
by decency and sweet philosophy,
from which wise Plato would have banned,
poets and
poetry and every kind of verse. For poets
are seditious as he wisely had observed.
