Dec 2014
The poet and the platonist
Were seated side by side
A carriage on the Circle Line
Was what they occupied,
While gazing at a map aloft.
It was the station guide
The train was running on its tracks
Running with all its speed
The carriage held but these two men
Great intellects indeed,
Deliberating mysteries
On which they disagreed.
Alongside Mr Gregory
Was seated Mr Syme
The former quite anarchic;
The latter, quite sublime,
For whom the whole discussion
Seemed but a waste of time.
The time has come the poet said
To speak of many things
Of God and Truth and Transcendence
And Saratoga Springs
And whether miracles exist
And archangelic wings
“O poet” said the Platonist
“Please look at what you’ve done!
You’ve ridiculed my arguments,
Where have my dogmas gone?”
“No need for such concern,” he said
“I’ve swallowed every one!”
Were seated side by side
A carriage on the Circle Line
Was what they occupied,
While gazing at a map aloft.
It was the station guide
The train was running on its tracks
Running with all its speed
The carriage held but these two men
Great intellects indeed,
Deliberating mysteries
On which they disagreed.
Alongside Mr Gregory
Was seated Mr Syme
The former quite anarchic;
The latter, quite sublime,
For whom the whole discussion
Seemed but a waste of time.
The time has come the poet said
To speak of many things
Of God and Truth and Transcendence
And Saratoga Springs
And whether miracles exist
And archangelic wings
“O poet” said the Platonist
“Please look at what you’ve done!
You’ve ridiculed my arguments,
Where have my dogmas gone?”
“No need for such concern,” he said
“I’ve swallowed every one!”
“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” wrote G.K. Chesterton in *Orthodoxy*. He also introduced in *The Man Who Was Thursday* those two characters Lucian Gregory and Gabriel Syme, the former a proponent of anarchy and chaos, the latter a defender of order and correctness. Gregory wanted nothing more than that the next station on the railway line on which they were travelling should be somewhere mysterious; Syme believed that there was more mystery in the fact that with hundreds of stations from which to choose, the next station would always be the one shown on the map.
I envisaged these two in the roles of Lewis Carroll’s Walrus and Carpenter and came up with this poem.
I have since discovered more than a hint of Dickinson in the second stanza.
I envisaged these two in the roles of Lewis Carroll’s Walrus and Carpenter and came up with this poem.
I have since discovered more than a hint of Dickinson in the second stanza.
