With a gram of silence we remember
Alexander Abian, dedicated teacher,
mathematician, and enemy of the moon,
believer in using America's arsenal
against its real, older enemy. Of course,
the astronomers objected, warning
a nuclear device would hurl down
its fractured halves, would kill us all, but,
"Imagine a world," Abian would insist,
without hurricanes, without heatwaves,
without blizzards and floods," enduring
their taunts with a certain grace, the
composure of the man who knows
Galileo, too, was not believed.

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