The girls, protected by gold wire from the gaze

Of the onrushing students, live in an atmosphere of vacuum

In the old schoolhouse covered with nasturtiums.

At night, comets, shooting stars, twirling planets,

Suns, bits of illuminated pumice, and spooks hang over the old place;

The atmosphere is breathless. Some find the summer light

Nauseous and damp, but there are those

Who are charmed by it, going out in the morning.

We must rest here, for this is where the teacher comes.

On his desk stands a vase of tears.

A quiet feeling pervades the playroom. His voice clears

Through the interminable afternoon: “I was a child once

Under the spangled sun. Now I do what must be done.

I teach reading and writing and flaming arithmetic. Those

In my home come to me anxiously at night, asking how it goes.

My door is always open. I never lie, and the great heat warms me.”

His door is always open, the fond schoolmaster!

We ought to imitate him in our lives,

For as a man lives, he dies. To pass away

In the afternoon, on the vast vapid bank

You think is coming to crown you with hollyhocks and lilacs, or in gold at the opera,

Requires that one shall have lived so much! And not

Answering questions and giving answers, but grandly sitting,

Like a great rock, through many years.

It is the erratic path of time we trace

On the globe, with moist fingertip, and surely, the globe stops;

We are pointing to England, to Africa, to Nigeria;

And we shall visit these places, you and I, and other places,

Including heavenly Naples, queen of the sea, where shall be king and you will be queen,

And all the places around Naples.

So the good old teacher is right, to stop with his finger on Naples, gazing out into the mild December afternoon

As his star pupil enters the classroom in that elaborate black and yellow creation.

He is thinking of her flounces, and is caught in them

as if they were made of iron, they will crush him to death!

Goodbye, old teacher, we must travel on, not to a better land, perhaps,

But to the England of the sonnets, Paris, Colombia and Switzerland

And all the places with names, that we wish to visit—

Strasbourg, Albania,

The coast of Holland, Madrid, Singapore, Naples, Salonika, Liberia, and Turkey.

So we leave you behind with her of the black and yellow flounces,

You were always a good friend, but a special one.

Now as we brush through the clinging leaves we seem to hear you crying;

You want us to come back, but it is too late to come back, isn’t it?

It is too late to go to the places with the names (what were they, anyway? just names).

It is too late to go anywhere but to the nearest star, that one, that hangs just over the hill, beckoning

Like a hand of which the arm is not visible. Goodbye, Father! Goodbye, pupils. Goodbye, my master and my dame.

We fly to the nearest star, whether it be red like a furnace, or yellow,

And we carry your lessons in our hearts (the lessons and our hearts are the same)

Out of the humid classroom, into the forever. Goodbye, Old Dog Tray.

And so they have left us feeling cross and tired.

They never cared for school anyway.

And they have left us with the things pinned on the bulletin board,

And the night, the endless, muggy night that is invading our school.