He wrote an epistle to the silence

And febrile months round him stalk

The torment of the scrawl, lone

Anthem to the book bereaved

And hours, and hopes that flew

In sightless aid for the titan Strike.

He bore the titan holes from beak to brain

Syllabus slipped, curriculum curled

Frozen to the naira exiled

From columns to rows, where it fled,

Bred the hatch of the halt, of direst demands

That stay invention by the gate –

 

No fatigue possible to mind

Assuaged the fever of the pause;

Waiting, he supposed, was such another

Curse to douse the sloth, of a phase of being

Immured to time’s passing death; for

Every night dropped to find no youth

Against his anxious eyes

Notions wilder, than the tousled class

Flickered through his wandering mind,

A season conquest, blue-penciled, potent

Pulses from erstwhile surges of algebra

Were reaped to compute the risk

Of a Stray’s relief, to brace the peril.

He vanishes.

 

One morning, I saw his face

Braced to iron bars on the fore

Of a penny newspaper; waiting –

Waiting the hour of a public lecture

At a conference of blabbermouths