The Debate. An Allegory

In the hall of he’vnly king, a sumptuous feast is spread
With many foods, del’cacies, and also wine and bread.
One by one, the stewards bring dish after subtle dish
The rich beef, taste-soaring birds, and all-important fish.

Two people stand at either end of this table fair
Woman with a mind of truth, to call foods rich and rare.
A man also who, well-schooled in all of reason’s ways,
Tests all foods for poison, that no lives may be erased.

For in the palace dwelleth, in diseased shadows hid,
An evil, scheming villain, who for men’s lives does bid.
Hidden as great high chef, he inserts substance vile
Into his favorite dishes, such is his treach’rous style.

With malice black as shadow formed by sea and ink a squid
This schemer does in fact intend to world of happiness rid.
For this feast is part of the Fair Woman’s wedding-day
And over one great feaster’s his heart she, so lovely, sways.

First come the primal hors’douevers, more basic than they seem
With loving care they are designed men’s appetites to preen
They cause the food-prude to forget future foods ‘gainst his taste
So that his enmity toward them may glad’y be erased.

Next comes an antipasto bar, within whose domain good
Are meat and cheese and vegetables, bare essences of food.
With comprehension of these things the meal must begin.
If you don’t know what food is, how shall you reach el fin?

One small bite of everything both man and maid must take
To see if its nutrition is genuine or fake.
Is poison in the deli ham? Is it in roast beef?
If one takes a bite of it, shall he complete the feast?

Next comes a bowl of oat-grain gruel, with grayness all entwined
Which fills temporal human mouth, and boggles every mind.
One might conceivabaly eat, and never ever cease
Unless one knew that other things were at this gracious feast.

Next comes a tow’r of fat and dough, a sav’ry funnel cake
Which in the shape of Nile-tomb has been masterf’ly baked.
On mind-seen bottom layer this great edifice does lay
But without this bread-foundation the rest would exist, stay.

Of these foods, these life-givers, that have come by so far
Which ones of goodly stuff are made, which ones of poison are?
With loving heart and cloudy head and aching, burning eye,
They must needs wait and watch the twain as the meal goes by.

Next comes a visual tour-de-force, a gift of vine and grape
A bottle of red Riesling wine blown into peacock’s shape
With each fair feather carved and fine, and seen in high relief
And filled with inf’nite bubbles, charming, random, and brief.

Then, from an artful, loving hand comes a sea-fish with sauce.
With aroma heavenly it puts expression at a loss.
The meat’s fair hue is equal to the sands of lands of Jew
And vegetables, in profuse life, surround it cooked just through.

In the flavor of the sauce, one tastes essence of fish
(The way to make the fluid is to cook them in one dish)
The sea-creature flavor, moreover, is lent its unique taste
By the azure, living waters where all fish do always baste.

(One course is left, and still the guests are hanging in suspense
To know which foods the poisoned are, and where evil ferments.
For perhaps the poison’s small and slow, will not show its face
Until time is passed far by, love’s healing is too late.)

The final course, the sweet dessert, is fruits of marzipan
Which please the tongue with magic spun of dolce sugar-sand.
All the pastries like pom’grante look, each more than one before
Lovely and lov’lyr still, till fecund’ty our eyes sore.

The ever-better sequence bright places in mystic trance
Anyone whose fort’nate eyes upon them happ’ns to chance.
Till in our bott’mless hunger for the true reality
Over a real pomegranate deadly war fought would be.

The meal is all over, the plates are put away
Slow comes the moment waited for long through trying day
When love and food and life and death will come to be unveiled
And who is dead and who is live will sol’mly be beheld.

But first the lib’ral man must speak, his verdict to pronounce
About the merits of the food (if there were no poison pounce).
Only with Ladies Taste and Health is his stomach in love
Their importance may be small, but naught should we be above.

“Friends and neighbors, Man and minds, hear my judgment,” he spoke,
“These marvelous means of sustenance our faculties have awoke
But two things at this meal large ought not to satisfy
The grayish slop so infinite and the funnel fried.

For any food that can be made in such great quantity
As the pudding ought by mortal man never eaten be.
And though the taste of funnel-cake may please the human bite
Fat in the hole need not be stored to cause the same delight.”

Then comes the final find of night, when the maid shall speak
And say upon whose beings poison has worked its freak.
Upon all men a silence falls, for to them, death is all
Unless they are her allies great, for then in love they’ll fall.

“You all know of what I like,” the terr’ble woman said
“With riddle I like to tease you, tho’t seems I’m on my head.
Come up to my dais, where a second feast’s bespread
The greatest feast of all, for it has both wine and bread.

Your thrice-frail minds are now quite like the taut string of drawn bow
As you wait for regal Death his hell-curse to bestow.
You ask me rightly which of you my ’ternal lover be
To which I only answer: come up and taste and see!”

And so to Berlioz tune they march, thinking its double-speak
Wondering if they shall be now proven strong or weak
Wondering if there will be a mystic marriage-join
And wondering if from them their life shall be purloined.

With nervous hearts and hands in dreadful careful craze
The diners sad on whom fate rests bread to their dry mouths raise.
The bread that holds the golden key to antique Book of Life
The bread that holds the final test to gain Her as a wife.

And as we watch we see with dread the secret now revealed
Those who ate of the pudding grey: their blood shall be congealed!
Even now, upon these future dead unlucky souls
They cannot eat the common bread, nor drink wine from common bowls!

Only those gallant hon’rable men who dwell within the pay
Of the logic of the man who pronounced earlier today
Were graced with wisdom great to see the fall’cy of the oat
And have been deemed wise enough to wear a handsome marriage-coat.

For divine bread and hevn’ly wine they are able to drink
And with these common food elements they are able to think.
Praise be the LORD Who, always wise, gave us a test so true
Through which we might find the thrice-blessed measure of what we do.