So, did you abandon your three small sons?
Since I would not escape
execution?
Didn’t your friends bribe guards at the prison?
Should flight from death be my
contribution
to history, to this city I fought
in battles to save? Yet didn’t
your words
critique democracy? Does man’s
free thought
and speech forbid truth, no clear
voices heard
to challenge power? Then do
you deny
stinging the wise with your public insults?
Isn’t stinging the nature of
gadflies?
But don’t their stings offer deadly results?
For the fly or the horse? The
fly in fact.
So: I didn’t break my social
contract.
Roger Armbrust
January 4,
2013
