The Gadfly

A Poem About Uncomfortable Truths

The Gadfly

Author's Note

Socrates likened himself to a gadfly—a small, persistent bug whose sting of truth roused the beast of the great Athenian state. This poem is an ode to that unsettling presence—the voice that disturbs, the question that pricks, the truth that refuses to sleep. The gadfly may be unwanted, even despised, but its sting is not cruelty, but care. The wound that opens the eye—a call to consciousness.

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The Gadfly

There is a creature sharp and small,

That lives to sting—not harm at all.

No hate it holds, no cruel delight.

It strikes to pull the world to light.

It stings the beast that lies in sleep,

That dreams of truths it does not keep.

It bites the flesh of self-deceit,

Where silence and delusion meet.

Its sting is quick—a pointed sound,

A jolt that shakes the sleeping ground.

The beast awakes in startled roar,

Its flanks confused, its pride made sore.

The gadfly offers not one excuse,

No softened sting, no single ruse.

It speaks in truths the world resents

To break the hearts of false pretense.

It lives not for the world’s embrace,

But for the crack it leaves in place.

Not for reward, or gentle rest,

But for the pain that shakes the nest.

It pays the price for what it brings:

The loss that haunts all honest things.

Its friends grow cold, its name turns black,

The world it wakes soon turns its back.

The cloaks of power call it mad,

Too fierce, too strange, too iron clad.

It shakes the halls of solemn law

And finds what others never saw.

Yet still it flies, though torn in flight,

Though darkness presses out the light.

It knows the cost, and stings anew—

Because it dreams of something true.

So praise the sting that starts the fire,

That breaks the spell of blind desire.

Though hated, hunted, cast aside—

The gadfly lives, and truth is wide.

And when you find a lie too sweet,

Too perfect in its soft deceit,

You’ll feel the echo in your chest—

The gadfly’s work will do the rest.