Someone at a table under a brown metal lamp
is studying the history of poetry.
Someone in the library at closing-time
has learned to say modernism,
trope, vatic, text.
She is listening for shreds of music.
He is searching for his name
back in the old country.
They cannot learn without teachers.
They are like uswhat we were
if you remember.
In a corner of night a voice
is crying in a kind of whisper:
More!
Can you rememberwhen we thought
the poets taughthow to live?
That is not the voice of a critic
nor a common reader
it is someone youngin anger
hardly knowing what to ask
who finds our linesour glosses
wantingin this world.