(no subject)
The classroom is idle.
The student reads a page, hears birdsong
dancing over words like sunlight
in the company of marigolds.
And you may ask, "What use are the senses
that so deceive?"
Still I beg you, though you may have
more troubles than hearers to receive them:
listen attentively, for those who cannot.
Else, each inhalation is oppression,
as if we had been running too fast
through the ant-tunnels of forgetfulness,
heat down the neck,
laminar flow splitting our skulls repeatedly
like a thousand fragile exoskeletons
crushed effortlessly underfoot.
One remembers such inculcation
on a dripping walk through woods
when Nobody watches you stumble
and when from the shadow bodily
the scion of centuries rises to meet you.
Behold! The graying phantom
of a formicine schoolmarm, chiding,
is come carrying all the lessons
you never learned.
"They turn with the sun," she says, breathless and continual.
The student reads a page, hears birdsong
dancing over words like sunlight
in the company of marigolds.
And you may ask, "What use are the senses
that so deceive?"
Still I beg you, though you may have
more troubles than hearers to receive them:
listen attentively, for those who cannot.
Else, each inhalation is oppression,
as if we had been running too fast
through the ant-tunnels of forgetfulness,
heat down the neck,
laminar flow splitting our skulls repeatedly
like a thousand fragile exoskeletons
crushed effortlessly underfoot.
One remembers such inculcation
on a dripping walk through woods
when Nobody watches you stumble
and when from the shadow bodily
the scion of centuries rises to meet you.
Behold! The graying phantom
of a formicine schoolmarm, chiding,
is come carrying all the lessons
you never learned.
"They turn with the sun," she says, breathless and continual.