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Socrates opines that nothing can harm a good man
Either in life or when dead –
But then, dear old Greek, when did a blunt object – say a frying-pan –
Strike you obliquely on the head?

Emerson, you claim that there’s properly no history,
Only biography –
But is that not like saying, Ralphie, that there are just places and more places
And never any geography?

And Bertram Russell, you feel that the supreme
Beauty is not aesthetic but merely mathematical –
Yet, Bert, your life was a serial pursuit of Love’s Young Dream,
Wrinkly veteran of many an adulterous sabbatical!

Is not life a hundred times too short
For us to bore ourselves? urges Nietzche.
Yet Friedrich, lad, if boredom is the sovereign crime of crimes
Why in heaven’s name did you elect to become a classical philology teacher?

And Hobbes, you aver that the permanent condition of man
Has always been outright war with his fellows. Jeepers, Tom!
Allow me to wonder where you and your philosophic clan
Have dredged all this remarkable ullage from!
Words are cheap, my friends, so very cheap:
And now, if you please, I will warm myself here and fall asleep.

© Colin Bailey, February 2010