Charlatans
At breakfast
my microwave appears to heat,
electrons clearly humming;
container, though, remaining cold,
oatmeal cooling rapidly.
At morning services
the local organist
conspires with Bach,
exalting me for no reason.
Later my country turns a drab,
freedom seeming suddenly
a triumph of the tawdry.
And now that star I treasure,
that window to heaven —
the light, I read, comes tardy,
comes from a cinder
dead a billion years.
