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 us      what we were
if you remember.

In a corner of night a voice
is crying in a kind of whisper:
More!
Can you remember      when we thought
the poets taught      how to live?
That is not the voice of a critic
nor a common reader
it is someone young      in anger
hardly knowing what to ask
who finds our lines      our glosses
wanting      in this world.