When Socrates “apologised”
With hemlock pints at seventy,
His Plato was but thirty years
As I was when my Socrates
“Apologised” at seventy.
As Rumi whitened silently
At setting of his solar Shams,
I daily whiten violently
In self-inflicted choler tongues.
They suffered as I suffer now
From painful knowledge of the truth,
Of knowing that our sheltered lives
Have taught us nothing worth a tooth.
We suffer knowing we don’t know,
And just repeat what we have heard,
With no originality,
Except in eloquence of words.
But then, the two didn’t give all up.
Accepting their deficiency
They humbled into writing down
The wisdom of their gurujis.
And through the years of writing them
And much mythologizing them,
The older Plato, Rumi shone
With brighter wisdoms of their own.
And this is why I am not them.
My eyes are still on my own fame.
I want to write my father’s words
To piggyback upon his name.
No Plato, Rumi fate for me.
Just fatal anonymity.
Minakhi Misra 