[From HUMANITAS, Volume VI, No. 2, 1993 © National Humanities Institute, Washington, DC USA]

The Cynic

Paul Gottfried

We who worry along paths
our ancestors took with surer steps, 
what is left to us? 
Is it to lie reflective on a banqueting couch, 
to gaze at the dregs in our krater, 
and to ponder some elegant quandary, 
as if a well-turned phrase might beguile
the bleakness of the hour, 
or bring back the sap to a sick and withered race? 

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