Parmenides may have been appropriated by Plato as a character in some of his works, but the actual writings of Parmenides are fragments, possibly even fragments of fragments. Poet-translator Stan Lombardo points out in his introduction to the fragments that it is possible (based on analysis of both content and hexameter) that Parmenides had training in a mystic tradition, possibly Orphic shamanism. Lombardo's translation of the fragments differs considerably from the standard Diels text. As an allegory for his atomistic philosophy of physics, Parmenides' fragments have certain pedagogical value. As poetry, they remain haunting and beautiful, particularly in Lombardo's capable hands. Certainly Rumi and Parmenides have plenty to talk about in that Big Coffeeshop in the Sky.
Excerpts from the Lombardo Translation
i.
The horses that take me to the ends of my mind
were taking me now; the drivers had put me
on the road to the Goddess, the manifest Way
that leads the enlightened through every delusion.
I was on that road. Wizard mares
strained at the chariot and maidens drove it.
The axle whined in the hubs like a Panspipe
hanging fire in the whirl of the wheels, propulsion
of these priestess-daughters of the Sun
when they leave on a mission from nightspace to light
pushing their veils from their heads with their hands.
The gates of the skyways of Night and Day
loomed up before us, gates made of space-stuff
but capped with a lintel, a stone threshold before them
and filled with the mass of great solid doors...
x.
You will come to know
the nature of the sky and all the signs that are there,
the imperceptible effects of the sun's blinding rays
and the source of its energy,
the force and the nature of the round-faced moon
in her erratic orbit,
and the arching dome of the universe,
how it originated
and how Necessity engineered it to fetter the stars.
xiv.
nightshining
round earth
a wanderer with borrowed light
Note: I strongly recommend the Lombardo translation to anyone interested in Parmenides, but must note that it is not a side-by-side translation. It can be very frustrating not to be able to consult the Greek, a situation easily remedied by acquiring the Diels as well as the Lombardo or by visiting http://philoctetes.free.fr/parmenides.htm and downloading the Diels as a PDF or in unicode. The Lombardo is currently out of print, but I had no problem finding a replacement copy when mine went into the bathtub last weekend.