The girls, protected by gold wire from the gaze
Of the onrushing students, live in an atmosphere of
vacuum
In the old schoolhouse covered with nasturtiums.
At night, comets, shooting stars, twirling planets,
Suns, bits of illuminated pumice, and spooks hang over
the old place;
The atmosphere is breathless. Some find the summer
light
Nauseous and damp, but there are those
Who are charmed by it, going out in the morning.
We must rest here, for this is where the teacher comes.
On his desk stands a vase of tears.
A quiet feeling pervades the playroom. His voice clears
Through the interminable afternoon: “I was a child
once
Under the spangled sun. Now I do what must be done.
I teach reading and writing and flaming arithmetic.
Those
In my home come to me anxiously at night, asking how
it goes.
My door is always open. I never lie, and the great heat
warms me.”
His door is always open, the fond schoolmaster!
We ought to imitate him in our lives,
For as a man lives, he dies. To pass away
In the afternoon, on the vast vapid bank
You think is coming to crown you with hollyhocks and
lilacs, or in gold at the opera,
Requires that one shall have lived so much! And not
Answering questions and giving answers, but grandly
sitting,
Like a great rock, through many years.
It is the erratic path of time we trace
On the globe, with moist fingertip, and surely, the globe
stops;
We are pointing to England, to Africa, to Nigeria;
And we shall visit these places, you and I, and other
places,
Including heavenly Naples, queen of the sea, where I
shall be king and you will be queen,
And all the places around Naples
So the good old teacher is right, to stop with his finger
on Naples, gazing out into the mild December
afternoon
As his star pupil enters the classroom in that elaborate
black and yellow creation.
He is thinking of her flounces, and is caught in them
as if they were made of iron, they will crush
him to death!
Goodbye, old teacher, we must travel on, not to a better
land, perhaps,
But to the England of the sonnets, Paris, Colombia and
Switzerland
And all the places with names, that we wish to visit
Strasbourg, Albania,
The coast of Holland, Madrid, Singapore, Naples, Sa
lonika, Liberia, and Turkey.
So we leave you behind with her of the black and yellow
flounces.
You were always a good friend, but a special one.
Now as we brush through the clinging leaves we seem
to hear you crying;
You want us to come back, but it is too late to come
back, isn’t it?
It is too late to go to the places with the names (what
were they, anyway? just names).
It is too late to go anywhere but to the nearest star,
that one, that hangs just over the hill, beckoning
Like a hand of which the arm is not visible. Goodbye,
Father! Goodbye, pupils. Goodbye, my master
and my dame.
We fly to the nearest star, whether it be red like a
furnace, or yellow,
And we carry your lessons in our hearts (the lessons
and our hearts are the same)
Out of the humid classroom, into the forever. Goodbye,
Old Dog Tray.
And so they have left us feeling cross and tired.
They never cared for school anyway.
And they have left us with the things pinned on the
bulletin board,
And the night, the endless, muggy night that is in
vading our school.
Leave a Reply