Who are these popinjays
Exposing themselves before us
With diamondlike gears flashing and foaming
In stainless-steel brainpans?
They are the new gods our time
Has thrown up,
Chanting their origins
And sympathy with the masses.
Hear their sepulchral voices
Emanating from the wool over their
Sheepskin temples.
The masses listen and tremble,
Worship and obey,
Snickering.
They suffer no other gods before them
Or after them.
They prove to us that the old
Prayers were clichés, the old
Attitudes were meaningless, the old
Gods were mortal.
The logic of their arguments
Is aura and halo.
It goes before them in the marketplace,
Provoking astonishment,
And lingers after them, causing merchants and vendors
To fan the air.
Surely all this will pass away.
Honest wisdom is coy,
And its light subdued.
Only the steady
Grains of truth, filtered by time
Will survive these gods.
