The Gift

We were three weeks

Into term, Sheila,

When you came

Through the classroom door;

Forty-four children

Bent over books,

Copying Roethke’s

‘The Lost Son’.

You wrote your

First poem on the ‘Moses’

Of Michelangelo.

Words cut like stone.

I taught you Greek

But your painting of

‘The Essence of the Rose’

Was pure Platonic form.

You drew the masks

Of Comedy and Tragedy

In perfect harmony.

Having seen neither;

So Socrates was right.

Those who have the Spirit’s gift

Will one day find the light.