Media Hub

I fashioned a sanctuary for them
and lined it with a tapestry of words
that rustled and whispered in deep-night silence,
restless to nestle in young minds
and be reborn like first fire from a clash
of stones or lightning flash,
but they only wanted GRADES.

I spread embroidered cloths of poetry
before them studded with sequins and jewels.
Some picked and pulled the threads then trampled over
them and clamored only for their GRADES.

I set before them the history of the human heart,
voices of those imprisoned or exiled,
the cry of one who died beside a road
in some forced march and left a penciled plea
for a moment of joy in a gray and broken world,
and in return they begged for GRADES.

I led them to the words of lovers, songs
of flesh and spirit joined, where the never-ending
voice of Orpheus singing of lost Eurydice
still makes forests weep and birds stop in mid-flight
to listen, yet like the Maenads, demented, crazed,
they screamed for GRADES.

I set in motion elegies and odes:
A woman wailing by an ancient fire
while out beyond wolves howl and hawks lurk
over ceremonial bones. A girl halting
by a lake to see the sunrise break
through clouds, mouth open in eternal praise.
But still they only wanted GRADES.

And after crowning them with garlands of words
and images, the sweet surprise of metaphors,
and leading the iambic procession with a dance
of anapests, they forgot my name,
so when we passed in darkened corridors
or on the boulevards at dusk,
they looked away or frowned in discontent,
recalling not a poem, not a word,
just one letter, one single, final GRADE.

--Kathie Corcoran