Wits: Great Haul Poem by Jose Claassen

I sat there
by myself
in a room with people
who talked and laughed
and regaled each other
with trite accounts
I was alone there and not quite unaccompanied
as I breathed in learning in that hall,
And as I inhaled deeply
and felt the sting of fresh air burn in my nostrils
with it came the musty deluge of the years
The 90 annums whose riven floor boards and high lattices
resound with the echoes
of footsteps that bound across
new canyons of intellect,
and as that heritage of knowing
cradled me in my happy grave
I rose from the Sheol of my formerness*
to the second birth awaiting me
as it did my fellows before
who probably sat there too
by themselves
in a room with people
and held in every breath
long as they could,
and as they exhaled fully
Time fixed their impress in that hall
on every seat
or teacher's lectern, or inquirer's lab
or courtroom bar or dentist's chair
or surgeon's table
or actor's stage
or miner's shaft
down every treasure-laden vein
strong sings the steady stream, 'Scientia
et labore
Scientia et Labore',
Sed in memoria non solum in latitudine
Ita ut sit...**