Paul Hartal

The summer sun at noon shines bright
And you are always everywhere
Underneath and at immense height
On the ground and in the air.

Your birth place is unknown to me
But your angle is always right
A vertical perpendicular, carefree,
To a horizontal line, firm and tight.

Marked by an elegant small square,
Your own cute symbol, neither acute
Nor obtuse, ninety degrees of a stair,
A skyscraper's desire to salute.

A quarter-turn of a full circle,
Three hours on an antique time piece,
Go Angulus Rectus, ride your bicycle,
The wheels rotate in patterned caprice.

A model of democracy you are,
Equal to all your peers in every tile,
Euclid's fourth postulate, a classic memoir,
But, oh, noble right angle, you never smile.