Diogenes: Citizen of the World

Father of Cynicism, you never accepted
your materialist age of social convention.

Instead you voiced your skepticism
while curled in a pithos jar, shivering in winter,
soothed by the Corinth summer winds.
You searched with a lamp for wise men,
and counselled young Alexander the Great.

When the King asked if there were anything 

you wanted, Diogenes replied, "Yes, that you 

should stand a little out of my sun.” His soldiers

awaited Alexander’s wrath. Instead, “I’ll tell you this:

 if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!"

A temple of self-reliance, yet you kept
a Phygian slave, Manes, to meet your needs.
When Manes fled, your friends urged pursuit.
“If Manes can live without Diogenes,
why not Diogenes without Manes?” you replied.

“Even bronze succumbs to time,
 yet not all ages, Diogenes, can dim your fame.
 You alone revealed the law of sufficiency
 to mortals, the simplest road through life.”