WHEN PLATO MET SOCRATES

This is the man your mother warned you about;
A gnarly, horrid little man with a notorious passion for boys.
First impulse is to hit him with a rock.

“Do you suppose,” he squeaks,
Eyes strolling like a moon-faced prawn,
“That courage is a shiny rendition of the soul?”

Shazba! Such imposition.
Who mentioned anything about courage?
But should you agree to this he says:
“And is not courage a very good thing?”

Yes indeedy! you say.
Who wouldn’t?
He: “Then is every shiny rendition
A very good thing?”

At which point everyone in Athens,
If they only knew what was good for them,
Ought to kick him roundly and
Denounce him as a flea bag.
Guzunga! Take that you old coot!

Instead, everyone laughs.
Trapped again by smelly old Socrates,
His head being three sizes too big
For his stocky runt of nastiness.
Irritations aplenty!
Makes the Agora look untidy.

This is the man your fellow citizens
Think is an acid to moral fibre.
Asking one too many questions.
Unitiated and unrestrained.

Corny salutations! say the boys.
The old bloke looks aghast and leans aft
Observing: “Ariston here has
A forehead as fat as the melons of Persia!”
As if he could talk. 
He did fight in the war.
He served with some distinction.

Famously, he goes without sandals.
He holds strange ideas on beans.
Worst of all, he supposes sophia
Is second cousin to the midwife’s call.
Thus he looks into the soul of young melon head
And announces that here,
Here is a mind eager to be born. 

 

- O. Spaniel Murray