Like all children, you were a de facto
        Member of the Flat Earth Society,
        Believing nothing but what you could see
        Or touch or whatever sense led act to

        Fruition: mudpies made summer beneath
        A tree whose measured shade endowed decrees
        Between light and dark: such hierarchies
        Gave you implicit, a sophistic faith--

        (Fallacious fellowship!)
        Youth's adherents
        Ignore the fact that most factions reject
        Their lyric league (which only fools have stayed

        Striplings of) and none condone its nonsense:
        No-one loves that vain solipsistic sect
        You'd never join, whose dues you've always paid.

Copyright © Bill Knott, 2000.  All Rights Reserved.