by Martin Anton Smith
He dared to have an intellectual life.
And so, of course, they hated him.
For when they talked to him,
They realised that they themselves,
Had no depth.
He was usually good at acting dumb,
But now at his advancing age,
He had grown tired of having too.
“Let them feel as the fools they are”,
He said to himself.
But then he suddenly felt ashamed of himself.
For he realised he’d forgotten something.
He realised that he was just a wisest man,
Living in a place where even the wisest man,
Would be seen as a dullard.
All it would take for this to happen,
Was the passage of perhaps two hundred years at most.
He would, in essence, be a fool like all the others.
He went back to hiding his intellectual life.
And now he felt less conflicted about it,
Though I wouldn’t exactly say he was happy about it.
It was a daily thought ritual that once it was over,
He immediately forgot all about it.
Until the exact same set of circumstances arose tomorrow.
Where he would think, & conclude the exact same things again.
All in all,
His daily suffering offered him a lot of mental comfort.
After all, It was the only routine he could follow with ease.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 