Planes touch down on the melting tarmac
Bodies decanting to the shimmering heat
Noise, pollution, throngs greet the eager minds
For they have arrived, the experts.

Questions and surveys, interesting anecdotes,
Dinner parties will be kept alive for another year
Papers written, stories relayed, assumptions made.
Yet nothing changes.

They wait. Next year another young mind will ask similar questions
And similar answers will be given.
Rather like an animal in a zoo. “Let them go” cry the outspoken, eager minds,
“Free them!”
“Terrible conditions shouldn’t be tolerated!”

Yet if they weren’t, where would the minds be?
What would the minds be doing?
Looking for more subjects to analyse
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Because they found the poorest, dirtiest people.
And their photos attest to that.