Bookends

 Composed in mind and calm upon the bench,
  cold marble hard beneath his aging  bones
  the old philosopher lies, his conversation stilled.
  With no more questions with which to assault his fellows
  now he can only turn to surrounding friends 
  and ask of Crito that he fulfill a last request:
  to clear a debt to the healer demigod.

  The gross epicurean with the wickedly agile brain
  is likewise stilled, while under the high heaped bedclothes
  Dame Quickly fumbles at his icecold feet;
  adds still more rugs to warm him, all in vain.
  There was, she  knew, but one way for him now.
  He too cries out upon his god, but she saw
  that at the turning of the tide, he had gone to Arthur's bosom.



  Alcibiades, Hal, both youthful princes
  two thousand years apart, corrupted it was claimed
  by their older mentors: a pattern easily construed 
  as part of man's matrix from the start of time,
  pre-empting a cruel rejection of them both.


  Lover of the world and lover of the worldly
  they proclaim a rounded balance;
  one saw the universe as grounded in goodness,
  the other became the icon of loved wickedness.
  Time and humanity have reconciled them both .