A response to “Economics for the Masses”:

The Masses Reply

Where I live in the Valley

Old men hunker in and stay quiet

As their way of life dies.

No way to shelter new life,

No one to consume life’s joys,

And, before long, no thing to consume.

Some still get and spend with effervescence

From their nothingness,

As long as they can traffic in empty notes

Whose day draws nigh.

What then?

Shall we traffic in empty titles? In obligations long since silenced?

Resurrect age-old bridles?

No, even marriage,

That solemn pledge of slumbering hope,

Comes tumbling down,

Un-housed.

Maria Owen ’73