Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.
Haniel Long
Students
and she has never studied
her lessons;
and when I flunk her
I feel that I am flunking Diana.
he makes me think of mountains.
Every now and then
he looms in the rear of the room
like a peak in the Andes:
but how would you like to teach
a peak in the Andes?
into a morgue,
and I find this hard;
but he turns my class-room
into a rathskeller
with his face and his talk and his ways.
Therefore I prize him.
until she smiles.
Perhaps she would like to smile all the time,
and thinks I will not permit it.
a look I have seen before.
All men of one idea
have this look;
they go to the stake,
to the torture-chamber,
with this in their eye.
I know what the boy’s idea is,
and I live in fear
that others may discover it, and for it
somehow crucify him.
there is a girl who looks at me strangely
as much as to say,
You are a young man,
and I am a young woman,
and what are you going to do about it?
And I look at her as much as to say,
I am going to keep the teacher’s desk between us, my dear,
as long as I can.
as though his pockets were stuffed
with chestnuts, or apples,
or as though he had been working
in hay or straw;
and he smells faintly of animals, too,
of dogs and of horses;
and there is a vague smell of gunpowder about him,
and a vague smell of tobacco;
and behind all these smells
is a miraculous distance
of river and field and wood,
all in the smell of out-doors.
as though I were a stone wall
between her and heaven—
whereas I try to be
a window for her,
and a door, a gate, a ladder, an elevator—
yet she will not look through,
or leap through,
or fly through,
or do anything but stare.
when the class is all over,
and says she is so sorry,
that my class is such an inspiration,
and such a queer sensation,
but ten-thirty is an early hour,
and the street-car service poor.
And I tell her softly, that in heaven
the street-car service is always poor,
but the good little angels rise up early
and get to school on time.
And she says, “O, thank you,”
so effusively.
nor the second, nor the third,
and when at last I saw her,
I hardly noticed her.
Yet this girl has gone through a tragedy
fighting those who had to be fought,
and nursing those who needed nursing.
And you would never guess it,
except for a queer little line at her lips
and her eyes, that are blue as steel,
blue as a dagger, blue as a quiet lake.
is disaster enough;
but it is worse to remember
how one might have done more.
It is too late—he has gone;
and nothing I can do
will bring him back to me,
will give me another chance with him,
not that I think it would have mattered.
clash of cymbals should precede her elephant
down the street to school—
she should be black from head to toes,
wearing barbaric jewels—
and now that I think of it,
why couldn’t she come through my class-room window
on the elephant’s trunk?
as perhaps Mrs. Siddons
regarded the third George—
and after all, why should she not?
But I live in terror of hearing her say,
In that tragical voice of hers, some day,
Bid me, out, out, damned spot.
then I could bring my dreams.
And I ask her what has lighter feet
than a dancing word?
and what speeds faster, what lasts longer
than a dance of phrases
down a page to far music?
She does not answer.
sit on my sacred desk
and rumple my sacred hair.
Yet he is the only one
who ever cared to carry my books
and call me “Maestro” in public.
And whenever I said a clever thing
he would exclaim, “Priceless, priceless!”
and he suspects me
of wasting his time.
O for some clever accountant
to compute my cash value—
for then I could write dollar signs
across the blackboard behind me,
and he would pay strict attention
and make little entries
in a little ledger.
without them she will perish.
But I fear she turns away
from the only dream that lasts
and gives her precious youth
to the dreams that go in an hour.
we parents and teachers,
and to please us
he writes moral axioms in a little book
and debates with himself continually
whether he lives the nobler life.
Nevertheless, great blood is his.
He is of the kin of Rigoletto,
Sancho Panza is his comrade,
Touchstone his uncle;
and he goes sedately down the path of pierrot
arm in arm with harlequin.
I go cold to my feet.
Some day I shall forget my necktie,
and on that day, proud and reproachful,
she will point her finger at me—
and the walls of my world
will tumble.