the shaman eats the poison berry first.
he learns the world by trembling.
his truth is written in the vomit,
the vision bought with fever-sweat,
a bargain struck with root and ghost.
his fee is paid in owl feathers,
and the weight the village cannot carry.

plato,
in the shaded colonnade,
casts shadows of the perfect form.
his truth is carved from dialectic,
a clean line drawn to separate
the thing itself from its pale copy.
his fee is paid in influence,
a student’s nod,
a city’s law.

one knows the demon in the river.
the other,
just the word for "water."
one wades the current,
feels its cold teeth.
the other maps the bank,
and owns it.

the shaman’s knowledge is a wound
that bleeds the world’s song.
plato’s knowledge is a key that locks the world away.

when the final apple falls,
the one that blurs to a promenade,
the shaman will already be chanting,
trying to soften the ground where we land.
plato will be drafting a republic,
a perfect law for the falling man.