A Parable for the Perceptive
In halls where quills have scratched their sober plea,
And gowns preserve the weight of history,
Where argument is altar, creed is case,
And eloquence holds pride of time and place,
A whisper ran through rows of powdered hair:
“Whose name is this, inscribed upon the chair?”
Not one who treads the labyrinth of law,
Nor one who keeps precedent in awe,
But one whose fame is forged in fevered light,
Whose grammar is the crowd’s tumultuous might.
His throne, a handheld glass; his court, the street;
His verdicts fall where reason fears to meet.
No writ he signs, no robe upon his back,
No index in the tomes of white and black.
His justice wears no seal, but bears the roar.
Of multitudes who pound upon the door.
He stirs the gale, yet cannot read the chart.
That marks the bearings of the learned heart.
So why, O elders of the measured quill,
Did you accord this phantom such a thrill?
What calculus of commerce, what design,
Bade you to bend your storied, steadfast line?
Ah, Discretion, keeper of the gate,
Did slumber steal your watchfulness too late?
For now, the purists frown behind their hands.
And whisper what the troubled hour demands:
Can spectacle with jurisprudence wed?
Must marble yield to gravel in its bed?
Upon the stage where eagles once conversed,
Must parrots now recite their lines rehearsed?
Let this not be a lampoon, coarse and plain,
But parable, for those who read with pain.
The crime is not the stranger at the feast,
But that the feast forgot itself, at least,
In courting noise to fill an empty chair,
And mistook thunder for a sage’s prayer.
So let the wise infer what isn’t said:
A guest invited, yet a standard fled.
For in that chamber, built on ink and bone,
Discretion slept and left the gates alone,
To loose a flood they ought to have withstood,
And dressed in robes what never understood.
©TheVillageBoy.
( The figureman who loves alphabets)
