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Home  »  Others for 1919  »  Students

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

Haniel Long

Students

1
SHE sweeps in like the moon goddess,

and she has never studied

her lessons;

and when I flunk her

I feel that I am flunking Diana.

2
I have great faith in this boy—

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?

3
There are some who turn my class-room

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.

4
She has a discontented face

until she smiles.

Perhaps she would like to smile all the time,

and thinks I will not permit it.

5
He has a certain look in his eye—

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.

6
Sometimes I have nervous moments—

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.

7
There is a smell not of the city about him,

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.

8
She looks at me

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.

9
A little cherubino comes in

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.

10
The first day I didn’t see her,

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.

11
To do one’s best and to fail

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.

12
She needs a more exotic air to blossom in—

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?

13
She regards me haughtily

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.

14
She says, If writing were like dancing,

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.

15
He is the only one who ever dared

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!”

16
All he sees is the dollar sign,

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.

17
She is hungry for dreams;

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.

18
We have given him a mask,

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.

19
When our eyes meet

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.