Montesquieu Poem by David Cooke

The dog-days scorch Bordeaux. Behind closed doors
at a desk he sits, charting norms through a sea
of print. As reason discovers the laws
that define the natural good, history
is a world he surveys, its changing customs
till day lies buried in a stack of tomes.

And all around his own domain prospers.
His ordered vines, absorbing light, ripen,
grow fat in that calm his method infers.
With goodwill, too, the just state could happen,
though law was its necessary logic
underpinning both virtue and rhetoric.

Mild-mannered, generous, what charmed the minds
of a dozen cities were unassuming habits,
the lens of an understanding that blinds
with moderation: if the way man fits
each circumstance depends upon chance alone,
then only justice could be a touchstone.

And yet procedure bored him, its penalties
and precedents inflating the swagger
of counsels inching toward their victories.
In the panelled hush of an ancient chamber
they talk of broken fences: a ceaseless drone
of venal minds locked in litigation.

In the salons they read a luminous prose,
and savour his irony, each stricture
softened by wit. Wearing ideas like clothes,
an elite parades disingenuous postures.
Beneath chandeliers their voices tinkle.
They are hairline flaws in priceless crystal.

With his books he sits, alone in the fort
of learning, and barters his sight for knowledge.
The Old Regime has crumpled. The retort
of the street will crush all measured language,
its philosophy honed down to technique,
the edge of a blade whose thinking is quick.