Poetry

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS

They look to tired critics like mere busts In galleries, but wittingly collected, By bold anachronism resurrected, This flesh so warm a skeptic almost trusts The felt, unliteral fidelity That framed them under sky and vaulting roof: The red-cloaked Heracleitus still aloof, Parmenides still pondering “to be,” Young Aristotle marking out this world, Old Plato pointing upward to the forms.