Universal woman? Wasn’t that
a promise too swiftly risen
from Glaucon’s wet desire
for the Politeia of the most
immaculate conception
offered in honor to the goddess —
when, borrowing — or stealing —
from the taboo powers of the dead in Hell,
he could become the perfect tyrant:
seen once by all, and then —
merely by turning a token
wrapped around his finger —
invisible to all who live,
so that, like one already dead,
he could never be caught,
and none could help
but yield to all he wanted?
And from all I have read and mulled,
I still cannot help recalling
how Karl Marx described his own dream,
and the ghost he summoned back from the dead —
and what justice there would mean:
nothing less than all transformed
into such Glauconian universal women,
without the right to remain apart,
without reticence or reservation —
is that why Cicero too rendered
the Glauconian Politeia as Res publica,
that “common thing” —
which sarcastic, sardonic Karl Marx,
like some Levantine Roman,
understood in turn as
“universal prostitution” —
communism’s global dawn —
with Plato and Socrates damned
for idealism, their naïve “mortal sin”
in any Saturnian ledger or draft.
Yet as one might expect,
even Karl Marx called such liberation
“primitive” and “vulgar” —
as though, without soul,
there could ever be more.
And so what of “universal woman” now,
when official communism has ended,
and the rule of money has overtaken
whatever still remained —
the selfsame mare of a dream:
a woman become the radical reverse,
the apogee and mockery of goddess,
into whom humanity as it is
must enter and swim —
whether wholly to the hilt,
body and soul,
or merely dipping by the bait —
so all alike may say
they drink and dine
the selfsame ocean.
Just as anyone may say
they have been to the library —
whether only from outside,
or after passing through the door
to meet the janitor —
yet never once reading
from the book
some god or Fate
has kept for them there,
all this time,
upon an old, dusty shelf.
