Tribal People

by Charles Stein

Ethnological Witness

Tribal people
tremble
under
      elders’
eyebrows’
           irritation at

the youths who
want to get out of the little
village and read a book about
the world they suppose
the book
knows

just as

in metropolitan cosmos

teenage girls

with avidity
read
in subways
lives
they believe
and don’t want to
go anywhere particularly