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Poetry

Phaedo

by Tim Chappell

Changeless like Plato’s certainties,
the permanence our minds impart
to a life that is contingent as
the beating of a heart:

we feel remote from doubt or chance,
we act as if we knew our parts;
we mean it metaphorically when
we talk about our hearts;

forgetting ends and origins,
and that the others all depart –
as certain as that each begins
the failing of each heart.

Thus I think, listening, head to chest,
“Your faint-beat rhythm had a start,
and one day there will be an end
of this your fragile heart,

though changeless Platonic certainties
seem permanence to minds apart
from a death that is as simple as
a stopping of a heart.”

Assurances of mind abandoned,
the contrary, uncertain art’s
the unseen hope that in mere flesh
God will rewind the useless heart.