Socrates’ Complaint About the New Technology of Writing
This discord of words
left in our heads by dead men—their
twisted syllables—this braid is
coming loose again. Those yet-unborn will be
the guardians of our thoughts.
They will be the hearers of many.
They will have learned nothing.
***
Now what we had by heart
no longer belongs to us.
The things we find (blossoms unfurling beside
the road) we catalogue and collectively
keep.
We write them down as a memorial.
***
Though there are times
when we see into the blankness
beyond this world to Olympus—that rush of light—
when we try to write it, the vision
becomes a few chords cradled on a mountain wind.
And if you who are yet to live
ask us what it is we’ve seen—if you reach for me—even
in a dream—you will wake to your own world’s
empty wind and the silence
that comes after speech—.
by Amanda Beth Peery