Threnody for the Educated
By: Matthew De Lacey Davidson
Tags: Ancient Greece, History, Classics, Ignorance, Education

poem — © 2019 Matthew de Lacey Davidson

We live in a world of “I don’t know”

where “what we do” is proudly displayed

inside the advertisements of

a tedious twenty-two minute sit-com

upon the latest forty-two inch flat screen television.

Laocoön’s no longer strangled by the snakes,

and Romulus and Remus found no cities;

I run away from the Hydra,

never to complete the other eleven labours;

the riddle of the Sphynx remains unsolved,

Prometheus hasn’t any secrets to dispense,

and Klotho spins no more.

The above comprise a different mythical status:

a plastic shopping bag of information

that doesn’t truly benefit or concern us

(unless we read about them

in a supermarket tabloid

overdosing on dangerous drugs,

being treated for sex-addiction,

or cutting at their wrists and arms).

Aristophanes’ latest play

is called “The Tooth Fairies”

a sadly little tale about the demagogues

(corruptors of our democracy who

win their votes by casting aspersions

upon minorities and people of colour).

And the crowds within the colosseum cheer mightily,

while thumbs point up or down in a seemingly random manner.

The Magna Carta on a Sheepskin

I wrap about my hunching shoulders –

to keep me warm.

And when there is no other use for it,

I lay it down, to stop the tea-stains

from my teacup

messing up the table in the kitchen.

El pueblo que no conoce su historia

esta condenado a repertirla

and the moneyed and powerful could not care less

pretending their contentment in their Land of “I Don’t Know”.

Angels sigh

while Jules Laforgue

sweeps the morgue.

Passersby

shall read some words and never wonder “why?”

at poetry-dot-org.

Experts, few

with commerce, wed

(to earn more bread).

This, Shakespeare knew –

(but didn’t Chaucer have a day-job, too?)

Thus, all our souls are bled.

Meanwhile, the Lemmings wander out the gates of the Ivory Tower;

I see them, with graduate degrees hanging

around their necks, like leaden weights,

dragging them to many fathoms deep.

The Educated sit alone,

completely ostracized,

barely eking out a living –

an untouchable caste, cursed by their knowledge and degrees

which made them unintentionally unemployable in the first place.

So why does Jules Laforgue

sweep the morgue?

And why doesn’t he enjoy it?

It pays the bills — does it not?

But those whose skills which are appreciated

by the money changers

(who define and control the culture)

point and laugh derisively:

“Ha, ha, ha, those eggheads think they’re so smart,

but they can’t even get a real job,”

as if committing crimes on Wall Street,

and decreasing the incomes of

the bottom ninety-nine percent

is somehow, some huge accomplishment

worthy of humanity and our legacy.

In the darkness,

the apothecary moves towards me stealthily,

with his knife,

to tell me that I need a bleeding.

The strength of my objection doesn’t matter;

he’s the economic expert, wearing the long-nosed plague-mask

informing me that “that old invisible hand”

is being stymied by my outmoded attitudes,

and if only I’d believe

accepting him as my one-true-saviour

(with stigmata clearly on his hands)

life-everlasting could be mine.

But how can one expect to have the slightest inkling

of the world’s vicissitudes

and incertitudes

without an understanding of what came before?

It’s the arrogant vacuity that irks me to the quick –

the total lack of inquisitive desire

that precarious, precious element — a spark of delight

which makes us human more, and less amoeba-like.

The passion and enjoyment most delicious

that Eureka-moment showing us

that something we had not realised existed

actually does, and now it fills a void

where before we never knew there was one.

The realisation that we are never fully-formed;

but just a process growing –

(and a part of something larger than ourselves);

a newer knowledge quietly confessed –

until that point in time the Ancient Greeks

once said that we are truly blessed.