By Richard Mather
An olive grove. Night. The sound of approaching footsteps.
SOCRATES: ‘Swounds! A dark day for strong flowers and cool breezes. Can you deny it?
PLATO: Are you spreching to me, sir?
SOCRATES: I am, almost certainly. [Sits beside PLATO.] Call me I am.
PLATO: Ha! Welcome. Call me anything you like. I’ll deny it later.
SOCRATES: Ho! I’ve only lived the one life. Where next? Should I go on?
PLATO: Always going on. Even when you’re half dead. I can’t understand the manifold reasons for taking one more breath. We always wonder, don’t we? Never get any further on. Up the road and over the hill, far and away.
SOCRATES: You are upset? [He slips further down his chair, really slouching, like Tom Paulin.]
[ARISTOTLE materialises from nowhere and takes his place beneath the tree.]
ARISTOTLE: I find this dialogue very moving.
PLATO: All my ideas go to waste. Sitting beneath this lousy olive tree. So much nature. Always so much.
ARISTOTLE: And yet never quite enough.
PLATO: Been here for 20 minutes and not a single happening.
SOCRATES: Sixty-three seconds of gravity. Hardly even felt it. The downward pull of the bottomless pit. God’s greatest creation.
PLATO: Bless his Heavenly Soul.
SOCRATES: May the angels of paradise wring his bloody neck.
ARISTOTLE: May the angels of paradise sling this bloody wreck.
PLATO: Well said. Hail the revolution, the turning of the fiery particle. Lo!
SOCRATES: The horror. The upswing of terrible wheels turning up.
ARISTOTLE: Come on, now, speak proper English.
SOCRATES: The language of Shakespeare and Milton?
PLATO: Of Wordsworth and Arnold?
SOCRATES: Of man’s first disobedience. The horror. The horror.
ARISTOTLE: The hollow sham of language. Very moving.
PLATO: Let’s all move. [They move positions].
[2 minutes, 45 seconds later]
PLATO: I needed that.
ARISTOTLE: As did I. I am certain of it. And yet, are we any better off?
SOCRATES: A change is as good as a vest. A twitch of the thread, a pull of the string and the knots come undone.
PLATO: Pffff. Is that all you have to say?
SOCRATES: That is all. It’s all that’s worth waiting for, anyhow.
[A breeze blows through the branches.]
PLATO: Did you feel that? It was Sophia.
SOPHIA: [Disguised.] Yes, it is I. In I come, out I go. Yes, I am it. It writes. I will write a supplication. Here. Now. As follows.
And in that hall
there was a cruel prison (which men don’t call fayre),
a place of wasted time. [Stops.] No, wait...
Life is not growing like a tree and love
is not to be had.
God, our help, consider us when we pass.
God, whose shrine stands in that hall, receive these persons.
Autumn has come within our imaginings.
Until you come, your children will wander, too excitable.
It is the limes dreaming the sun or always the same heart, always.
PLATO: Heaven ‘elp us orl.
SOPHIA: I thank you.
SOCRATES: A superb supplication. That’ll be in all the best books.
PLATO: Better get out the critics.
ARISTOTLE: Are you referencing to me?
PLATO: And what of it? Is there nothing you can say that is not.
SOCRATES: Now, boys. Let’s be in the affirmative.
PLATO: I’ll try again. Is there nothing you can that is.
ARISTOTLE: [Confused.] Aghadash! Pishmushtiniski! Kakakaka!
SOCRATES: Much better. Polytongued. Sophia is within him.
PLATO: And all around him. Don't need wood or stone.
SOCRATES: He is blessed. Look, he has the face of an heretic.
ARISTOTLE: Kakakaka.
PLATO: It almost brings a tear to my throat.
SOCRATES: A veritable choker. Sophia has him by the ruddy neck.
PLATO: Has him by the bloody heck. Lo! a flaming chariot.
SOCRATES: I see nothing. Minion thou liest.
PLATO: Pardon me. ‘Twas a fault unwilling.
SOPHIA: I thank you, again. I have done my bit, and now I must leave. [Bows.] I have others to infect. [To PLATO.] I will see you anon. [She fades into the branches and disappears.]
[Silence.]
SOCRATES: Did we enjoy that?
PLATO: Let’s see. Enjoy: take pleasure in; have use or benefit of. More the first bit.
SOCRATES: A pleasure is as good as a pest.
PLATO: [Thinking.] Didlidum. What did it say? Something about limes?
ARISTOTLE: No, lions. Lions dreaming in the sun.
PLATO: That’d be a goody life.
SOCRATES: Yes. Nice and easy. Better to be in the sun than in time of snow. You’ve heard of Benaiah?
PLATO: I’ve not had that feeling of satisfaction.
SOCRATES: Slew a lion in a pit when it was snowing. And two men who looked like lions.
PLATO: The swine. The pig.
SOCRATES: The Lord builds and the Lord knocks down.
PLATO: A worthy occupation. The wheel of life and all that. Only fair. Nothing lives forever.
[Silence.]
ARISTOTLE: Is it raining or not? Is there nothing on our heads?
[ZENO and HERACLITUS fall out of the tree, curse, stand, dust themselves down.]
ZENO: If it’s raining then you should certainly know. If it is not, then the same rule applies.
HERACLITUS: And if it’s raining then let it rain, and if it’s not, which I believe to be the case, then it follows that we should not let it rain.
ZENO: Whether we believe it’s raining or not is of little importance. Time marches on, ever impatient.
SOCRATES: Yes, and not for the last time.
PLATO: I can tell we’ve got a perpetual situation on our hands.
HERACLITUS: Everything we do is perpetual.
ZENO: Yes, every word.
SOCRATES: I need to think. You’ve got me thinking. What! This is unprecedented. I must leave you again.
[He wanders into the dark garden. The others look bewildered.]
ARISTOTLE: Pish! He’s not been back long. What next?
PLATO: [Picking up a bundle of scrolls.] Let us wait with our eyeballs peeled.
ARISTOTLE: And now?
PLATO: [Reading aloud.] And the crowd was parted from the tabernacle; and he said, ‘be bold, Miriam, for you are to become leonine’, and she did become leonine, like it could have been foreseen.
ARISTOTLE: And that’s one version, good sir. It is to be admitted.
PLATO: Let us admit it.
ZENO and HERACLITUS: We admit it.
ARISTOTLE: It is admitted.
PLATO: And now?
[Fade.]
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