What is there to say of the man holding fast to something he declares right?
A stubbornness celebrated by story or by song,
but rarely by his neighbors, an individual against the throng.
Is he a progressive; a visionary for a coming fad
or a true conservative, in the truest sense; to preserve the wisdom of the past?
He must have a spine, and a chin to take a hit
if and when it were needed, yes, for conviction to earn its grit.
But what of this devotion makes the outcast a hero?
Is it a superior sense of the good
or refusal to cede to the rest of the world?
Are we to judge, or is it the duty of future generations
to dig up his story this man who stands out in history
as a voice, louder than those he once faced–erased
as time passes on, the legacy now clear
right and wrong is always distinct when viewed in the rear.
This man was right, hooray! I’m sure he’d be thrilled if he were with us today.
But he never faced the conclusion of his battle
a sad old man, he dies.
But why?
Is it not easier and more pleasant to submit to an excuse he could convince
himself to recuse his stance? And since
the constant state of his angst changes every face he faces
to that of a foe, not by his own eye,
but that sly tell of the judgemental glance
only he detects off his fellow man.
Would it not be to his gain?
To allow the sway of the public to guide his way
To do all his thinking, and absorb all life’s blame?
Could he not go away?
Would it be such a cowardly act for him to leave
To go to a new place where he could practice what he chose to believe?
Who is to tell if the lonely road is correct?
For the billions born to a state who takes every strip of freedom away,
the path of the stubborn unmistakably leads to years in a cage
and in a wave of terror, they’ll wither away, praying to God the family’s okay.
But this God, if I may say, who tends to his sheep, even one gone astray,
must be the sole company of a man standing on his own
and each groan of the pain filled years lifted feebly as a prayer
must bring a tear to He who sustains, and righteously refrains
from acting with force and parting the waves.
like that great act of salvation eternally praised.
That is, if this man were right.
But how many times are we, like he, blind
to the very incongruities of our hopeless convictions?
Each one a stronghold against the true Life for christians.
That the lack of community was a trap
for the easiest of sins to capture our man.
His mind now set against a physical enemy,
he slowly resents, quick to convince himself, that the remedy is within.
So he begins to replace every standard of faith, the creeds and the teachings
for his own moral code. And how cold he grows,
without a warm embrace or the taste of a loving community
one virtue forgotten to the man on his own– humility.