I can still recall the expression on his face
When I first suggested
That I wished to learn something practical in place
Of academic discourse.  He requested

Time to digest, could a good night's sleep
Bare in his child some common sense.
He was sure that simply with time I would see
Reason.   I did not take offence

For I knew that it would be hard
For a premiere league thinker like him,
To accept that philosophy was just a red card
To one such as me.  Here was the thing,

The dialogue that I invariably sought
Was everyday chariot shop chat -
Athletic prowess and wine.  Yes, I thought,
But just of sport - not those higher facts

Upon which his satellites felt so obliged to opine.
So my inheritance passed to the state
And I was expunged - in time -
From that metaphysical world, where brains

refused to contemplate

The movement of a sphere that was not oblate.

Your purity precluded the truth
About the one that was born the wrong side
Of the protractor.  They banished me
beyond the set-square with quasi-theological spin,
Spun to perpetuate your popular myth.
I tire of the veneration that your name inspires,
I want my bit of the GCSE spotlight. 
Let the aspiring geometers curse me
In mumbling mnemonics.
It's time to get even, so sod you
And your Spice Ox,
I'm going to start eating beans!