'a dry soul is wisest and best' <br /> <br />Biographers write that above all men <br />he was a lofty and hubristic spirit. <br />A walking contradiction, he would shout <br />that Homer should be turned out of the lists <br />and beaten, and Archilochus as well, <br />since better to extinguish impertinence, <br />than to put out fire. He felt that men <br />should fight for law as much as for their city. <br />Yet, when requested to make laws for them, <br />he turned them down, by arguing their city <br />already had a faulty constitution. <br />Besides, he had important things to do: <br />a game of dice with children at the Temple. <br />(It was there his magnum opus lay.) <br />Turned misanthrope, he headed for the hills <br />where for years he fed on grass and plants. <br />Only when afflicted with edema <br />would he come back down, asking the physicians <br />if they could bring drought after heavy rain. <br />When they said no, he smeared his trunk and face <br />with ox manure, and dried out in the sun. <br />He was discovered dead the following day, <br />his parched lips now two gates to the sahara, <br />the river in his veins not quite the same.<br /><br />Leo Yankevich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/heraclitus-2/
