Plato I had gone to your chapel
on a wintry November night.
Your sage scattered everywhere—
in the air, in the water,
in the earth, where I stared
deeply into the well of your eyes,
a kind of abyssal charm.
I went barefoot to see you.
I climbed up the hill
unflinchingly, Plato.
I hauled your books like a bovine yak
up the hillbilly brae of New England spring.
Squirrels, acorns, Setaria Viridis—
the grizzled oak shaded the hundred-meter trek
to the hilltop where your chapel stood.
Sanguine magnolias paved my way.

Plato I had collected your words
like fireflies in a bottle, and as I was
tearing open the envelope of
the result letter for the philosophy
conference, I dreamt of your voices,
like an unyielding lover,
telling me You are in!
But, instead,
“Sorry.”
I lay on the grassland’s agonizing blades
for a whole hour,
until the early-spring ice eroded my legs.

Plato I so desperately longed for you, once,
to know you, to befriend you,
but I didn’t know you had left so many doors between us.
I was a faithful fan of your dead white wisdom,
Platonian philosophy is the true Philosophy!
Platonian ethics are the true Ethics!
But tell me, Plato,
why had I ever sat in an empty classroom,
counting the dusty dilapidated chairs,
the philosophy club no one came to,
though everyone had promised,
with their apathetic, perfunctory smile.

Plato you had left so many doors
but I didn’t have the key.
Each page I had touched of yours
was an archway that alienated the stranger.

Plato I was a stranger.
I strayed myself on the hillbilly brae
of New England spring
to find something I had missed,
until I could no longer breathe.

Plato the early-spring ice had murdered me,
I was filled with its agonizing blades
left unnoticed on the hill.
I am a lover no longer.
Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Derrida.
Woe to my overzealous fondness for the dead white wisdom!
I used to hate such cliché the most,
but Plato I am an Asian boy.

Miller (Lang) Ming is a poet from Jiangsu, China, studying in Massachusetts. Standing at the intersection of cultures, he explores memory, identity, and displacement through vivid imagery. His poems have earned recognition from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards thrice, and his academic works appear in Atlantis Press and The Schola.