Diogenes and the Honest Woman - by Stephen Dunn

After the few honest men he'd found
bored him into stupor,
and it became clear more disappointment
lay ahead, Diogenes darkened his lantern,
gave it all up. Honesty, he'd learned,
 
was what men confused with how they felt,
with whatever entered their minds.
No authoritative wonderment in their voices,
none of those hesitations that signal
a healthy collision of ideas.
 
He'd try to stay on the sidelines now,
perhaps uncloak a self-deception,
tweak a lie. But he wouldn't give up
sleeping in that cold tub of his. No,
still no amenities for him, nothing to blur
 
the hard facts, the way a woman might,
the way pleasure does. Even in retirement
he made sure he needed nothing, austerity
his dubious ism against the false.
Everyone but himself he found wanting.
 
Until she appeared, no one dared say
a man who carried a lantern around
in daylight was pretentious. No one
said publicly a wiser man would know
it's in the dark that truth is most told.
 
Word filtered to Diogenes of this woman,
quiet for years, who'd begun speaking
such things, and of the many who listened.
They said she could foretell the future.
But foretelling was the art of being exact
 
about what's right in front of us, she insisted.
Diogenes walked barefoot over cobblestones
to get to her house. Bring oranges, he was told,
a choice of plums. She liked fleshy things,
especially from the stoical.
 
"I've always admired your brilliance,"
she said to him. On the wall behind her chair,
in big letters: He who is fated to hang
is merely assured he won't drown--as if she knew
Diogenes would love its severity, which he did.
 
Here was a woman, he worried, who understood
how to make gestures to her opponent.
Before he could speak, she touched his hand.
"Sometimes, you know, there's little difference
between a brutal and an honest man."
 
Diogenes didn't know, but was sure now
he shouldn't have come. "Am I right, sir,
in that search of yours, you deprived yourself
of food and water, that you felt so pure
and unburdened...." Diogenes cut her off;
 
certain things were not debatable.
It was clearer than ever to him that women
were unable to understand the higher pursuits.
"Did you shine the light right in their faces?
What, pray tell, sir, did you expect?"
 
 _______________
 
  
as published in The American Poetry Review, July/Aug 2007. Vol. 36, No. 4