OLD TEACHERS                           88



Comments on underdeveloped ideas
Young frantic imagery and spider writing 
Irregular attendances
Even when present
Typical reports and a few gold stars

You made the lessons real
Gave me Blake, Orwell and Eliot
Poetic discipline has slipped
But back then, when not singing the blues
On desks at breaktime
My rough books would be full 
Of far freer verse than I can write now

When I lose track of the present
I bring the past into being 
Only in the English periods did I feel at home
Literature and drama
Became a religious and physical education

It was the birth of the mad poet
Every evening typing
For the morning walls
To be torn down and replaced
Calling the pupils to awake
And rise against themselves
The scratched record beneath the Headmasters' door
Said "Freedom for the insane"


Wonder if he got the message?