Ross Murdoch Martin: ‘The Peerless Pair’
The Peerless Pair
Long ago, they set the mental
Parameters of our own time.
Each rejected the black thread of
Magic, fixed Reason in its place,
But thereafter went their own way.
For Plato, true Reason was ‘pure’
Like maths, the mind an isolate.
His argument champions the
Red thread of religion and all
Authoritarian regimes.
Aristotle’s Reason, marked by
Respect for the sensory world,
In time begat modernity’s
White thread of science; and ever
Supported the democratic impulse.
Magical, one’s tempted to think
Of this amazing conjunction:
Two utterly epochal minds
Flowering in the one puny
Town, in the same flicker of time,
Like orchids in an Arctic clime!
Ross Murdoch Martin
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