Apology, Aside I: Audi Alteram Partem, The Republic

In days that fared long, and away from first-century faith and mysticism… 
before there was definition (mandate) and purpose—a living that was still on lease,
where people could count up to forty for a lifetime, 
before consensus of the right and the wrong, 
of right and the law, of consequence and condemnation, 
before Plato, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Kant;
when identity demanded action and command,
and flocking into herds, cowardly, would leave one parched
of recognition, family-piety, fruit, and reward,
and the remnants of the damned were enveloped into a void.

A certain moment was written then, 
it would become formative history, heritage till the renaissance, 
then prophesied when man departed, along with the lion, from God.
	
“Your students speak highly of you, and yet, I, 
along with the functional majority of the city can only pity them, 
for you’ve come to attend your trial in utterly unassuming apparel, 
and etiquette that further aids the cause 
for which we all have gathered here today.
You’ve never spared a chance to corrupt the youth, 
and divert us from honest, generous, ‘Capitol’; 
consuming ambitious minds with your dreary word 
that they can’t help but chant until their dying breath.”

“Your speech is plagued with conviction that has bled to become confusion, 
and with poor fabrication and inspection. 
He stands as sturdy as the sovereign, 
and democracy which has brought about this court; 
his voice is the tongue of rebellion, against myth and facade, 
and isn’t it woefully inappropriate for you 
to try to tarnish a man with condemnatory words 
without ever having stated a single fact in justification?
I advise you to reconsider, and take back your claim.”

Attention is to be commanded back to formation, 
(command sight)
repulsion is to be forced on as mandate, 
(torment the sinner)
for silence births nuance, and further identity, and self.

Attention is commanded, from oligarchs and slaves,
(command sight) 
turning in a life’s worth of sermon into a solitary serve, 
turning the deck, saving the world.
(sermon)

Mysticism perpetuated long before this man, but in fragmented form, 
in Plato’s world of forms, or when Hume distincted the knower and the known;
(rumination)
and when the sword was stabbed in the field, and blood sank to the roots
of crops in a field, I was born again…

Knowledge was on lease, the Capitol has persisted long after the feud, 
segmentation grew, society in distant pockets in the same home,
(societal rumination) 
away from rebellion, overwhelmed in slumber and sloth, 
laying over slaughtered bodies of the sovereign and thought.
(Marx; the writing on the wall)

The court had left little for this man or rebellion,
but army had departed, the damage had been done, 
a fire erupted in the field…
(solidification of thought)
The first two commandments stood in sequence as the master
was convicted in his late age, with his hair trodden gray;
with no heir to raise, fear would come to life—
(a final fracture)
Master finally spoke…

“Firstly, I greet all present, 
those that would rather have me delegated to a beast,
and those that have come as spectators and as support…
Long live Mother Greece, and Sovereignty, Democracy, and Judiciary.
I apologise for the brief regard, and for the statement I’m yet to deliver, 
I've indeed trodden for far too long; an eternity it seems… 
Ah…regardless I declare that I concede with all allegations 
the Prosecutor has raised against me; 
I also would disregard, kindly, all defences that these two young, 
generous men have tried to serve against those allegations…
I fully comply with the court, 
please do bring the hemlock, 
I do not wish to speak in my defence any further…”

Then came the abrupt end, 
death came as a friend, 
the unassuming ones cried a stolen prose, 
then the author assumed the heightened stage—the higher role. 

The ‘facade’ as it was perceived was then dissolved, 
hemlock was ingested in full by him;
there wasn’t a nexus to look forward to, or a written record to remember him by.
His followers rushed into court, to escort him out, 
to some sedentary corner of the room around,
and bid farewell to the man that was keen to die for his word.
Despite the mythic quality of the event, 
they knew not to begin to write, 
and bastardise his demise;
and speak instead, instead of holding water from wells
that’d been parched for long, for the threat imposed on masculinity if naught.

Then the day fell, in disregard of all else, 
and democracy persisted another wave of complacent judgement, 
where the greatest of intellects bowed
to be punished, and put to rest;
By night, one of the commandments chose to dedicate their life to sovereign
and the other ventured until finding their first disciple,
then next in line to the throne.
The Apology was written in much the same spirit:
to relegate democracy, and thesise a counter clause, 
where the intellectual was king, along men atop hierarchy…
and it was kept much the same since then.