grins out at us
from the very top
of the Acropolis
with the Parthenon
in its immensity
towering behind
in profound silence
a timeless symbol
of the sublime.
So thus she came
saw and conquered
the ancient world
in a mere snapshot
who yet cannot tell
an Ionic column
from a Doric one
or see the temple’s
masonic geometry
as a grand mirror
of Plato’s abstract
realm of Forms.
Oh how Socrates
would have laughed
himself to scorn
at this presumption
as if travel could
broaden such minds
with ambits narrower
than the spaces
between these lines.