*
they were born into rusty necklaces
and stone floor kissing their soles
and before their very eyes,
where pupils had long overthrown the irises,
a non-stop shadow theatre was being
played by silhouettes
who knew a secret
you thought you were now
the third in the row
because the old man to your left
had stopped replying a while ago ––
you had never seen each other's faces,
but the brightest remarks
about your life on the wall
were made with his fuelless voice
and when your chains were suddenly broken,
everyone pitied you and you fell
he's going to die, they said when you had gone
and you thought so too
just like theirs, your life was contours on stone
and then you were blinded by
everything you saw:
what created the pictures no one could interpret
what the old man might have looked like when talking
that the world is rotated by the sun
that you were free
and ignorant
they had to be saved,
they were trapped with echoes
inside the cave you now saw
and didn't believe how it was possible
but they laughed, they got angry
he's a fool, they said
and refused to be freed by a madman
finally you went,
past the big fire they would never see
and past the stifling air that would never
choke their lungs like yours,
you let them savour the lie
and stepped out again
into
the intelligible realm.
*
Spoiler
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html
