You should know
I’m not who I am
The one who you see liv­ing an every­day life
Being paid for the job he’s doing
Some­times with pains in his back
Or in his knees
The tri­umph of stu­pid­i­ty giv­ing him migraine headaches 
He who reads the papers and hears the news
And drinks with his friends or alone
And smokes an old pipe secret­ly so his wife doesn’t know
He who wor­ries about the lives of kids
And strug­gles to write the unwritten

I am a man who makes his life far from here
Who explores unknown places in the earth
Who nips in the bud mon­strous hurricanes
Who holds a tight leash on flood­ing rivers and spins energy
To light up the night
Who reveals through the cos­mos the his­to­ry of creation
Who helps find the names for new stars
Who takes pro­tons apart like shelling walnuts
Enter­ing through quarks
To get at matter’s secrets
Who can make the dumb speak and deaf hear
Tun­ing in to the world’s cacophony
Who appears in the path of bar­bar­ian hordes
And crush­es them
Who destroys wild dictators
The minute they step away from their thrones
And peo­ple wake up smiling
Who finds the roots of med­i­cines for each disease
Who undoes the green­house effect
Sav­ing the world from glob­al warming
And in the evening
After con­duct­ing a giant orchestra
And a cho­rus of a mil­lion chil­dren in the Sahara desert
That he has caused to blos­som with olive trees and oranges
Returns to his home
To lie only a lit­tle bit tired
Near the qui­et breath­ing of his beloved wife.

2007

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