This poem appears in the Summer 2013 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.
Philosophy’s last hope lies in his grave;
the grand plan of Boethius is dead,
bludgeoned by a brutal king. To save
our patrimony follow those who fled:
for Benedict is hiding in his hills,
building a city to contempt of self,
where fervent souls surrender their own wills,
in a monastery on a mountain shelf.
Your university is gone; the seed
must sleep six hundred years until its season
arrives—bright springtime of the schools. We need
you now to take the treasuries of reason
and fly this dying light. Cassiodorus,
keep alive the West’s past wisdom for us.
Mark Amorose’s poems have appeared in Chronicles, First Things, Measure, and St. Austin Review, among other publications. His book In the Saguaro Forest collects sixty-four of his sonnets and lyrics.
