A PHILOSOPHER CAN NEVER ADMIT BEING IN WRONG

When the Athenians had sentenced him to death,

the astronomer Anaxagoras escaped to Lampsacus;

the nature of the Sun and the Moon

were not reason enough to die for.

Better to live, teach

and see them sail the great void.

The material things of the cosmos

have reality beyond the human arguments

and need no human sacrifices

to confirm their existence,

unlike what exists solely

in the thoughts of human beings.

When the Athenians turned their condemning

gaze on Socrates a generation later,

he stayed to drink hemlock and die;

preferring martyrdom for debating

on some foreign agora and

allowing the Athenians think they had won.

16.07.2020