In the Yeats Class, Summer Term

The young professor squeaks the chalk across

the blackboard. The blind girl, all her senses rapt,

punches her notebook paper with a stylus,

translating his drawl to the pointillist’s Ur-script

of Braille. The rest of us are bored. The gray

wind from the crowded, muggy street: more real

than “Hades’ bobbin-cloth unwinding from the soul”

or “shadows of birds on a sea-starved, hungry sea.”

And I? I’ve lost my hard-won second sight

since that young married professor beat

his heart on mine. What vision will complete

the cries I stifled in his arms all night?

I gaze out the window, take automatic notes,

while mid-day breaks the songs from birds’ throats.

In its own fuel, the lamp’s wick drowns. I open

an ancient Chinese book, and throw three coins.