77.

Mrs. Olyphant:

“We can sit here, hmm? lest Esther say she’s cold

In the shadow of the ship. What do you say, Mr. Ridge?”

“ ‘Molest her?’ I hardly know her,” quipped Mr. Ridge.

Esther Pryme returned, “You are very droll, Ridge. But I doubt

You could be a serious poet.”

“Where do you think I should stow it?

C’mon, you be Mrs. Browning.

I’ll be Tennyson.

You are far prettier

And I’m much more fun.”

“You are a married man, Mr. Ridge. Scandalous!

You don’t deserve your wife, I’m sure.”

“Must a man deserve his wife?

I wouldn’t think scarcely one in ten

Women deserve their husbands.”

“It’s precisely that flippancy that would keep your poetry from greatness.”

“My poetry could be great flippancy, I suppose.

It isn’t the Kalevala or even the Lusíads.

It’s more of a sketchbook, clippings,

Blades of poetic herbs, or buds of verse.

Why right here I have some notes:

A conversation with our Barb.”

“She doesn’t like to be called Barb.”    

“But, Esther, it so fits her pointed tongue.

She says that Homer is her poet. All other poets

Owe him a debt or can be found within his books.

I countered that I wasn’t so sure I was in there.

Homer speaks to me but not for me. I like Homer

But I could probably live without him.

Could I really live without Plato.

‘Plato hates poets. A great hater, Plato.

He hated everyone who didn’t think like him.

He certainly hated Homer.’

Hated Homer or hated how Homer was used?

I asked. ‘Plato was likely autistic,’ she said.

So was Einstein, I countered. He didn’t speak

Till he was three. That’s perfect DSM IV material.

And anyway, Socrates was a great lover

And all the early dialogues end in aporia.

We really have to read Plato charitably.

We throw out so much if we call it all fascist trash.

We miss his subtleties and ironies

His inconsistencies.

Homer was the one who buried differences,

Denied sources, bullied muses.

‘Homer had great human compassion.’  

Unless you were a suitor or Thersites or in Troy

Or boring and not royal, or a god.

Women don’t figure.

Women do better in Plato.

‘Though not by much.’

True but he gave us logic and with that we

Could ask why that was the case.

Was it a law of god? Where’d god get his laws?

Can Homer begin to raise that question? No.

Plato was the humanist. Homer the theist.