TIMES, CUSTOMS

    "Do not roar, Athenians"^*
The public places, the amphitheatres
and pantheons are for your entertainment
for an easy life
for mating and caressing
and servants and slaves, young and younger
might come in handy for the exercise

citizens, you are not
afflicted by lack of freedom,
by poverty or infirmity. Quite the contrary,
you vote, orate, nibble.
You conquer and travel
inherit and win.
Settle down, before it's too late,
you polytheic and godless men.
Enough of being choosy
between rhetoric and politics
mantic and mathematics,
enough of competing, dear self-loving creatures,
outrunning and outsmarting each other
conspiring and negotiating.
Enough, now, of pretence.

The poor are gathering on the squares
agoras and auditoriums
at first quiet then loud
at first weak then strong
at first few then many.

There are, democrats, times and customs you may not know
there are truths left unsaid in a dialogue
at feasts and orgies, amid muslin and perfumes
where the unguents are ethereal and the wine has been
left to breathe.

There are truths so familiar they will choke in your
throat
truths that roar on their own
truths of rebellion
that even the dogs know
that even the mice recognize.

---

^* Plato, The Defense of Socrates

Translated by Ilija Casule and Thomas Shapcott

© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
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