We break
as the newspaper
and anchorman read
teleprompter like,
and life is on repeat,
and good folk,
forever tired,
nod and know the future
as if the crystal ball
was something other than
the Allegory of the Cave,1
and we know no better of life.
[1]Plato’s cave: a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world.
Socrates explains that if a prisoner is freed from the cave that he will come to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not reality at all. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life.
