Instructor Poems

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
...

a fleet of birds
in the sky
forming an arrow
cutting across the wind
...

Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,
...

Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon's bright diadem,
...

Her Mother's Epitaph

Here lies
A worthy matron of unspotted life,
...

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.
'O Cæsar, we who are about to die
...

I
Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk—
Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking
...

Many decades after graduation
the students sneak back onto
the school-grounds at night
and within the pane-lit windows
...

It is believed ~ that life is splendid
Like a vibrant rainbow in the distance
Each hue mirrors our sentiments
And we express our aspirations
...

Am being sent to, sent to
A fine finishing school
For a refresher course
for a refresher course
...

". . . Consider that the meritorious services of the Sergeant Instructors attached to the Egyptian Army haue been inadequately acknowledged. . . . To the excellence of their work is mainly due the great improvement that has taken place in the soldiers of H.H. the Khedive." -- Extract from Letter, 1897


Said England unto Pharaoh, "I must make a man of you,
...

May you wake up on January 1st,
finding that the world has not come
to an end, the lights work, the water
faucets flow, and the sky has not fallen?
...

ON a rocky peak once sat I early,
Gazing on the mist with eyes unmoving;
Stretch'd out like a pall of greyish texture,
All things round, and all above it cover'd.
...

'Twas in scientific circles
That the great Professor Brown
Had a world-wide reputation
As a writer of renown.
...

A man had attained great excellence in the art of wrestling, who knew three hundred and sixty exquisite tricks and daily exhibited something new. He had a particular affection for the beauty of one of his pupils whom he taught three hundred and fifty-nine tricks, refraining to impart to him only one. At last the youth had attained such power and skill that no one was able to contend with him and he went so far as to say to the sultan: "I allow superiority to my teacher on account of his age and from gratitude for his instruction but my strength is not less than his and my skill equal." The king, who was not pleased with this want of good manners, ordered them to wrestle with each other and a spacious locality having been fixed upon, the pillars of state and courtiers of his majesty made their appearance. The youth made an onslaught like a mad elephant with an impulse which might have uprooted a mountain of brass from its place but the master, who knew that he was in strength superior to himself, attacked him with the rare trick he had reserved to himself and which the youth was unable to elude; whereon the master, lifting him up with his hands from the ground, raised him above his head and then threw him down. Shouts were raised by the spectators and the king ordered a robe of honour with other presents to be given to the teacher but reproached and blamed the youth for having attempted to cope with his instructor and succumbed. He replied: "My lord, he has not vanquished me by his strength but there was a slender part in the art of wrestling which he had withheld from me and had today thereby got the upper hand of me." The master said: "I had reserved it for such an occasion because wise men have said: “Do not give so much strength to thy friend that, if he becomes thy foe, he may injure thee.” Hast thou not heard what the man said who suffered molestation from one whom he had educated?

Either fidelity itself does not exist in this world
Or nobody practices it in our time.
...

Old as I am, for lady's love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet,
Which once inflamed my soul, and still inspires my wit.
...

Walpole talks of "a man and his price."
List to a ditty queer --
The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-
Resident-Engineer,
...