sucks ideas out of our minds,

Plato said.

Actually, Socrates said it,

in something Plato wrote.

I forget what.

 

I guess Plato was out of his mind

when he wrote it.

I guess he was in the mind

of Socrates.

​

Sucking up ideas.

 

Writing is like the CEO

outsourcing important jobs

to unimportant people.

Writing, we learn to forget.

We let go. A piece of us blows

out the window.

 

Later, we go outside,

gather the pieces up

and put them someplace.

A drawer, maybe.

Writing, we learn to remember

which drawer remembers what

we forgot.

 

But as I was saying.

 

That Socrates. He never

wrote anything down.

He was afraid some stranger might pass by,

pick up his thoughts,

put them together wrong,

make them say

things he didn't mean.

 

He left all that to Plato,

who moved into his vacant apartment

but never changed the nameplate

on the mailbox.

 

Up all night, every night.

Answering the correspondence.

Waiting for the phone to ring.

Disguising his voice.

 

Such a hard act to follow:

Where were all those Ideas?

And the clutter!

shiny little gods everywhere—

as if the head that drunken Alcibiades

pried open,

expecting a freezer full of nothing,

had been kicked over like a wastebasket.

 

Sweep them up.

Make the rooms tidy.

Find some space—

empty out a bookshelf, maybe,

under a recessed ceiling light.

Put some Ideas there.

 

Before Plato died,

did he remember the afternoon

when he and Socrates walked among the olive trees

on the banks of Kiffisos?

(The cicadas were deafening!)

That was the afternoon when he

(I mean Socrates)

was examining the leaves for blight,

and said nothing.