The bespectacled elite gathered in the glassy box
of modern architecture, prattling politely about the
poet’s new novel, analyzing psychoanalysts and
parsing the layers of rhetoric that shaped the modern age.

The high-speed spreading at high school debates
served as a high-minded metaphor of linguistic legerdemain,
contained a critique of the vacuity of the era’s political speech.
Outside, a panhandler begged for bites of a breakfast sandwich.