by somebody famous who now is long dead
does not mean it was ever true.
This goes for Moses, Jesus, Mohammed,
plus Gautama Siddhartha (the Buddha),
Marx, Mao, and Lenin. Sigmund Freud, too.
AND all other sages throughout the ages —
Philosophers! Scientists! “Gods”! —
who said what they said and did what they did.
They ALL got it wrong. I mean, what are the odds
of anyone getting anything right,
of correctly assessing the data,
from but a few scraps which — there is no perhaps —
prove insufficient sooner or later?
Every discovery obsolesces those past.
Wonders and blunders fade ever so fast.
We just, I suggest, take a guess — more than less —
the best fit for a few observations.
If we get lucky, everything's ducky,
we're less incorrect. With reservations.
So we survive. And reproduce.
Which we assume is proof of some truth.
But what, after all, is the whole point?
As Hamlet says, “Time's out of joint.”
Hamlet, of course, is NOT a real being.
Being a fiction, I think, is freeing.
Strutting and fretting for but an hour
would, I submit, be a whole lot less dour
than overachieving an overripe age.
Here's to lives lived solely on stage.
