So we didn’t change the world.

Those ideas hurled

at others best intentions

now seem more shaky

than shaking.

Yet when the verbal chips

were down, how we’d

bet them with the best;

mouth-grenade articulacy

was the weapon

for a ready reckoning.

It was another language

lacking, a

simultaneous translation.

We blew our gaff

waiting for

movers of muscle

to hustle words

into factions: self-blest

with world-redeeming right

we joined all the rest

more full of talk than fight.