Dear mentor, these days I think
No end of your time in Athens.
We have the same little men today
Whose little brief authority spins
Self-evident truths into “treacherous” acts,
Letting loose the minions of state
On those whose angst on behalf of justice
Is met with the terrified shrapnel of hate.
I see you smile at the futile task
Of quelling the laser of the mind,
Since across centuries and the Aegean Sea
You notice how inevitably questions their answers find.
When you your assigned hemlock sipped,
Did you have then this certainty
That no tyrant's falsehood may ever defeat
The posers that hold the key
To the career of the human mind
From the lesser to the greater truth,
Unstoppable by cruelty
And the machinations of the sleuth
Deployed by the day's strutting don
To beguile ignorance into loyalty,
And label “enemies of the realm”
Those whose minds are unyielding, free?
Ah that the ages wake up late
To the treasures that they first decimate,
Which then become their legacies
Defended with a newer hate.
Dear Master, here is what we learn from you—
That although our questions may not end
In unraveling some final certainty,
Some truth which is transcendent,
Should we not question we would be
Complicit and deserving slaves
To some unconscionable certainty
Peddled by Time's puissant knaves.
Badri Raina