As Much an Idiot as Aristotle, Cicero, Ovid, Spenser and Shakespeare

 

I will knock at your

Gate in the darkness where white

Petals disappear.

~ Kyorai

[Englished by Phillip Whidden]

By Ragesoss – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2555371

We went to see the bonsai on the shelves

(11) Place – Japanese Bonsai Garden at the National Arboretum – YouTube

Together, you and I, at least the you

That I projected then.  Two separate selves

We were but I had my pathetic view

Derived from Greek philosophy.  A fool

Is just a fool no matter how he tries

To wrest the truth like bonsai.  I could drool

About the tiny trees with silent cries

In gnarled shapes.  The cosmos, though, is frank

In its assessments.  We were not one soul

“in bodies twain” despite that Greek.  The blank

Truth shouts.  The truth always twist control.

  Your sacred mysticism blanked out me

    And women lacking any serendipity.

© Phillip Whidden