Dame Philosophy
Anicius Boethius wrote De consolatione
in prison, charged with conspiracy.
It’s thought that he was executed not long after,
in Pavia, place of his exile,
circa 524 CE.
As for the book, surely worth reading
(for centuries esteemed ‘The Golden Volume’).
But then, who has the time?
Last night again trying to get through it
I fell asleep on the couch,
into the badly lit, great near-after.
There, taking shape, her form
emerging from the cursive gloom
as from eternity’s cabinet …
it was she, to the life, unchanged.
I woke, partly, in a crowd
of mute people packed into a dirigible
flying past a corner of the moon.
Solemnly deploying instruments
and occupied at monitors and charts,
all there seemed intent
on some far threshold. While astern
the earth veered slowly away
shrinking to the size of a robin’s egg,
a marble. Gazing after it
with the ache one knows running
through an airport as the last flight departs,
I reached out. The dream broke.
And there I was, in the dead of night,
nodding over De consolatione.
