Parallel Lives Poem by Betim Muco

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.