This is how a country goes bad.
Reason does not govern
The social order, in the Republic.
The old philosophers thought reason
If spoken plainly could alter
The governing order of the world.
Was it a comfort to believe
That someone held the Word
In their mind to establish
The world beyond thinking
The world on the ground
Upheld and upholding
The mind in its cottage
The thought of the world
Apart from the mind
Stable of immortal horses?
And the long disputations of Abelard...
What was the discourse?
What was the virtue of speech
Had there not been a world
To uphold and a mind to think
Of worlds that were not itself
The mind echoing the outside
Creak of tree-frogs at night—
The window and witness—
To tell the story of what it saw?
Was there never a song
A dogma close to Paradise
Worthy of our tenderness?
Were the tongues always
Deceived and the spoils
Bestowed by conquerors
The purchase of blindness?
On the wall is the writing
By hand of the last poet
To leave the last city behind.
Her words are calligraphy.
The drawing made by them
The letters of the writing
What it says is that here
A hand once made a mark.
O liberty to write your precious
Freedom like a faulty wire.
Through the window the maple trees
Shining and swaying.
Lights sputter as the hand moves.
Well then, to write dark letters
On dark pages in the dark hall.
It matters that the words hold on
And the meanings cling like iron.
Copyright © 2020 by Mark McMorris. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 1, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.