Platon’s Requiem
BY ALEX AZAR
Peer out now into the moon-lit sky Of stoic centuries long gone by. Of wars filled with agonizing strife With lambs, sons, both taken to the knife
It’s meaning elusive, it protrudes awkwardly from his tongue, And finds its mark with its singular purpose done. Spherical and whole the word fills it’s needed place And fills in the marks on this convalescing peasant’s face.
In anguish, set your eyes to the night And whimper at your mortal, fleeting sight. As light of nebulous novas near And strike your face, tormented tear.
Like a draft of spring air After a short, violent, watery flair, Tacit meaning washes over your face, but you feel no dreadful need to give chase.
Look on through the brass-covered glass Vain as is your earthly mass. In dire confusion, the glint of an eye, The piercing blaze, now gone, small as a fly.
A new idea, though distantly known in your youth, Flutters up in your soul, an abundance of truth. ‘How have I been so obstinate’, you query, The peaceful orb responds, “ ‘ome sit, have f’ith, m’ deary”
The mystery of death you’ve only seen. Embarrassment, humiliation, gleaned. Mutilated flesh, merging into one, The dirt, the sky, after the setting sun.
The complexities of old dissipate as new snow melts. The ambiguities in goodness and life together smelts. And as this takes place this feverish peasant gives a yawn, For he knows for him, old Platon, it will soon be dawn.
Take your rest now from the worn and narrowed glass. Come join Mars’ prisoners, brutish and crass. Forget what wondering eyes have seen. Cease the search for the veiled cosmic sheen.
As you drift off, into the regions of restful revery You understand the whole, the part as you were meant to see. Surrounded by a peace known only in your heart, As the world becomes singular, its tragedy, art.
A man as round as earth toils on With whiskers uncut and teeth, many gone. Desultory flames illuminate his pockmarked skin, Its crevices and craters carrying desired sin.
He is here you now know, in the stars in the sky, In the face of this smiling old man soon to die.
The eyes on his sallow complexion Rest there easy, like planets of an infinite inflection. Oblivious, they land on you And dwell no longer than they are due. With expert hands, working assiduously in craft, And skills seemingly learned before his young brother’s draft, Watch him answer the questions posed by the starving shadows And turn this freezing night into his placid, loved meadows. He laughs and shares a jolly word, One he had only learned, just then, that day, from a man of the third.
In the blissful, whispering fields of rye, In the face-down drummer boy, no longer living shy. In the mindless jokes and banter of camp, In the once-quiet dirt roads, now strangely quite damp. In the bullets that grazed your sunken shoulder, In the burning of villages, reduced to a smolder. And as you reach the temporary border Of life and death, See the simplicity in the order And the goodness in breath.
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