Untitled -- Plato

Guest poem sent in by Nikhil Sethi

(Poem #1279) Untitled Star of my life, to the stars your face is turned; Would I were the heavens, looking back at you with ten thousand eyes. -- Plato

Comments :) does it really need any? Its just so simple and so beautiful
that nothing I say about it can do it justice. (or so I feel about it).

Regards
Nikhil Sethi

[Martin adds]

Plato had a lot to say about poetry :). On the one hand, there's his famous
quote

   "Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history"

On the other hand, book 10 of his Republic contains an extended diatribe
against poetry ("imitative poetry" to be precise), which he considers "thrice
removed" from the truth, and rejected in his Ideal Republic:

   Of he many excellences which I perceive in the order of our State, there is
   none which upon reflection pleases me better than the rule about poetry.

   To what do you refer?

   To the rejection of imitative poetry, which certainly ought not to be
   received

     -- http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.11.x.html

I think today's poem speaks more eloquently than any diatribe, though.

[1] a fascinating document, by the way - the first time I read it, I was
spellbound despite my initial reluctance to embark upon it