Down to verse (1751)

Macadam Alley LIX

 

Pull down my vanity.

How start me

With what’s in front of me?

 

Will this one do?

Parmenides, who speaks

To all of one, in sum,

The one who spoke of One

That left poor Socrates confused,

Who claimed to follow not the One,

But priestess of the oracle, 

Refused she-priest, 

If you will, a Muse,

Who’d said him wise.

Ignoring her and Ion’s cries

Then took his mini coracle, 

His argument to sea, a ruse.

To paddle to it,

Battle with it,

Oblate of a kind,

Participant in fate.

The one who washes us 

As footnotes in it, late.

He left the One behind.

Ashore we mind our roundabouts,

Our stands for Golden Hinds,

Or prayer or war

In pantheons.

So far from truth that binds.