Extracting a Poem from the Section On the Lyre from Plato’s Laws Flood

“There came over me an intense delight

when I gazed thus on this formless flood

of speech like ours, it struck me …

that I couldn’t find a better pattern than this

and that The Warden of the Laws must hire

those who will likewise praise it as we do.”

Plato, Laws 811d-e

 

Amid voluminous tongues

with far-diverging verses

or in prose lost to harmony,

one’s soul’s reining stops,

 

yet not wholly at a loss,

at a loss for a pattern

or without help

from Heaven we live,

 

and that means we too

are framed like a poem

within someplace deep

out of keen delight,

 

out of syllables of Gods

as we go on learning

though still so slowly

of the gentle furrows

 

that make a lyre of this heart.