For more than thirty years we hadn’t met.
I remembered the bright query of your face,
That single-minded look,intense and stern,
Yet most important -how could I forget?-
Was what your taught me inadvertantly
(tutored by books and parents, even more
By my own awe at what was yet to learn):
The finest intellect can be a bore.
At this, perhaps our final interview,
Still luminous with your passion to instruct,
You speak to that recalcitrant pupil who
Inhaled the chalk-dust of your rhetoric.
I nod, I sip my wine, I praise your view,
Grateful, my dear, that I escaped from you.
(Carolyn Kizer)
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Based on Topics: Faces Poems, Wine Poems, Boredom Poems, Parents Poems, Rhetoric PoemsBased on Keywords: instruct, interview, intellect, pupil, inhaled, query, tutored, single-minded, recalcitrant, chalk-dust