Poem: The Closed Mind

 I told him the world was going places. 

But he wouldn't believe me me and only smiled

and said I was making a fool out of him;

As if I needed to ! 

He tilled his ancestral tithe and cringed low

before those who lived by his credulity; 

I told him men

had visited the moon, 

but he frowned and said 'twas blasphemous-- 

Why, his wretched old nag could not make it 

to the top of the hill, 

and the moon, he knew, 

was much much farther ! 

And anyway, what was the use 

of going there?

He had his land 

and was content, 

or at least he thought he was , because 

they told him he should be. 

Only, he said, 

with a strange yearning in his eyes, 

he thought a lot 

at night 

when the moon was out, and wondered 

what it must be like, up there?  

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from The Anvil of Dreams 1995