A Dream of Socrates Outside A WIndow With Children

IMAGE: Phoenix, Plato and Socrates with Child



A DREAM OF SOCRATES OUTSIDE THE WINDOW WITH CHILDREN


Socrates came to me with birds on, else
Flying beside
And a throng of youthful children hanging
On his every word
Strewn with herbs and leaves and flowers
Like pages
Torn from some young and ancient speech
And he said:
"After infancy now they take them, take them all
Into a room
And allow them to scribble, draw pictures, to colour in
Or to paint
And only much later to describe in writ words what
It is out
As if the room and window like the page defined
The world
As if the eye and the ear, the lips and tongue know
Not a cosmos."
"Whereas we always taught them outside, without frame,
Out of doors, else
On wet days took them up through the whole great palace
To show them views
From every quadrant of the compass, of what was danger
To guard against
Or grace. They learnt the aspect out of every possible window
But especially to see its frame."