a knowingly mysterious web
weaves its clever ignorance
around the sojourn soldiers
of scholarship
and the labyrinth
of our enlightened despair
is reason’s own irrationality
tripping over the technicalities
of fact and expression
truth has squandered its affection
and left us scattered
along the path
of our own obsessions
and we answer
with tattered pleas
for the mercy
of scientific knowledge
for some recognition
among the monoliths
of theory and equations