A Vagabond Jew from Lithuania: A Poem on Salomon Maimon

A Vagabond Jew from Lithuania: A Poem on Salomon Maimon

It took a vagabond Jew from Lithuania  

to strike the wick that Königsberg’s sage  

had hid and let go out in dark’s old age.  

Said the synagogue’s rude son:  

Let there be German with a Yiddish tongue,  

and from his restless mind  

concepts flowed  

like fire onto the page.  

With quid facti? and quid juris?  

as his lamps,  

he lit the lecture halls  

and shadowed nooks  

of Europe with flame incandescent,  

a torch held high to guide the way —  

though few would follow,  

and fewer still today  

invoke the name of Salomon Maimon,  

the vagabond Jew of Lithuania,  

whose brilliance still flares upon the page.