A Deaf Man Eavesdropping ~ a phrase from R. H. Blyth

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Since Plato was a deaf man eavesdropping,

We do not have to pay attention to

That man.  Philosophy went out shopping

Inside a cave of shadows.  What was true

Was not discovered.  Millions followed him,

Authoritarian inside his cave.

His careful, careful thinking is too blindly prim.

He taught that we should bow and scrape, behave

Like captured slaves or, worse, like women raped

By royal victors who become the kings

Of wisdom.  Western wisdom has been shaped

Too long by deafness, clipped our thinking wings.

  Too long we were the shadows on his walls

    Unlike a Nietzsche with his bigger balls.

~ Phillip Whidden