Eppur Si Muove

It's hard to live in Lilliput, I find.
I have to cross my fingers, play their game.
Their billing, filling, drilling daily grind

sits ill with me. They all trot out the same
tired cliches. Passing a painting, never fail
to comment on the squareness of the frame.

Unprofitable, weary, flat and stale.
You can't earn prizes here. These fools prize earning.
No sweets to eat. It's one long dreary tale

of condemnation, disapproval, spurning.
The Sunday supplements determine taste,
all tearing down, forbidding, banning, burning.

They're sealed in heavy metal, concrete-cased
austerity. They put the "die" in "diet".
What will survive of them is nuclear waste.

Denounce, detract, dismiss it and deny it.
Don't look for clover -- look for cloven hooves.
Excoriate it, flay it, vilify it.

They'd love to let life lurch along in grooves,
the gauche, perverse, unruly human mind
trapped tidily in aspic. But it moves.

Author's Note

When Galileo was put on trial in front of the Inquisition in 1633, he was ordered to recant his view that the earth moved around the sun. He said what they wanted to hear, but on his way out was heard to mutter, "Eppur si muove" ("But it moves").