The Ancients of today

How might the grandiosity of

Intellect and high cultured

Conversatio mesh with the

Dour puritan thinker of the Environment.

How might the baroque

Flaneur turn his attention to

The drab scientism and bleak

Despair of living within limits.

Is it possible to bring the poets,

Essayists, high soaring critics

Their sparkling dinner parties and

Gay Parisian pursuits to this crisis.

Plato and polar caps, the grand

History of culture and its musings,

Its reflections on the human condition,

Brought to the troubles of an age.

Troubles politic and discursive, this

Time shaped by a revolution in

Perpetuity, railing forever against

What preceded, what may have mattered.

Could instead the lessons of an

Age have anything to teach a

Modern world, a world devoid of

Gods, of truths, of divine grace.

The wit and wisdom of tabled

Chatter, of roaming the hallways

Of spirited discussion, of great

Roaring laughter and debate.

I wonder and the prospects for

A deepening time, a time settled,

Nestled in its roots and yet

Soaring, too, on the wings of thought.

Thought teasing out the angles, the

War and wonder that writhes

Behind the sheer surfaces of

Ignorant, disspirited explanation.

Passion and love and a caring for

Humanity to replace the

Robotic, facile engineered with a 

Chaotic intellect writ large 

On the booming

Star-riven I.