The Latin Lesson Poem by David Cooke

With sturdy jowls Brother Athanasius,
who back then we knew as Beef, chomped great slabs
of Virgil, which he digested for us,
struggling with the English in Brodie's cribs.

Aeneas and Father Anchises moved
through a pagan world obscured by the toils
of syntax, while we shambled on, reproved
by a voice more urgent than the Sybil's.

The Brothers could all quote Latin, pronounced
with a palatal blandness, the soft sounds
of a church's dialect, and enhanced
their wisdom with words unscholarly minds

found locked in lexicon, drill, declension.
And those words, too, were the smell of incense
in a quiet house of genuflection,
tall candles lighting the untouched presence.