Say the crew, ‘or vacillation’s the defect
Of this creature of impulse. No progress,
Steady as corals accresce,
Do we see to captaincy. Inconstant
Of opinion, this leader will be recreant
To his own word of command. Can we listen
To one so unready to christen
First opinion as truth? Self-deceived,
Can he value his thoughts, conceived
Only to be killed in infancy,
Not left to grow to maturity?
A man so wanting in forbearance
Must be the despair of his parents,
For he has lost his way in the world.’
And still he steers,
And still he veers -
While others are hoping to learn the truth painlessly
(As soon as they’ve built the computer), aimlessly
(When the almond-eyed geeks have landed), intuitively
(With the next drugged ‘high’), passively or quietively
(Not glorifying it with their lives), causatively
(From physics’ Grand Unified Theory), sanatively
(When the human genome is mapped), figuratively
(When art pour l’art is just that). Yet, substantively,
Truth is itself, cannot be inferred from
Opinion, cannot be parasitic upon
Credulity, for the conscience and cosmos are handles on it -
And the searcher on a winding course is more likely to find it.