The poem is set in 1989, when 'szabadsag',(freedom) reached Hungary in the wake of Glasnost,and Russian troops are leaving. The narrator describes the room of a cultured and liberal schoolteacher doing a thesis on 'Contrapuntal Techniques' in Ezra Pound's 'Cantos.' Quotations from Pound and references to his chair (ie. his time) in Venice set up a delicate counterpoint between new freedom and ongoing culture in Hungary, Pound's WWII Fascism, and what is implied to be the enduring value of his poetry.