Today I’m grump enough that I’m appalled
at all the ignorance so current now.
My father quoting Kipling is recalled,
or Noyes, or Lindsay’s architecture. How
decided 7th graders not to learn?
And why so uninformed the rest of you?
I watched us from our infancy, but turn
with fresh astonishment at what we grew.

We walk asleep. We move on cruise control.
We don’t know opera or geography.
Most think a quark’s a comic and a mole
is seldom more than garden enemy.
I’d lecture if you’d listen, but your ears
are clogging with the refuse of the years.