FOR MY LAST CLASS OF FRESHMEN

There is no word for what I love in you,
but it is sure, sacred and daily as bread.
I speak by indirections of a world
divisible as loaves among ourselves
and multiplied like miracles because
we share the private tables of the mind.
We join in rites and sacraments that bind

and keep us bound like vows when we face God
or Plato over coffee, books, and smoke.
Discovering the truth we always knew,
we look in one another’s eyes surprised
and reconciled to what we shall recall
five years from now reclining on a plane,
exchanging socks, surrendering to pain,

dying, or saddleblocked before a birth.
Today it is enough that we rehearse
for nothing but today and everything
abreast of us impatient to be known.
If we profess no more but nothing less,
let us be tame as eagles, mad as saints,
or casual as Job in his complaints

until we learn the liturgies that sound
their psalms this second in the minstrel blood
alive from Solomon through Charlemagne
to Huckleberry’s scuttlebutt to you.
Let us dare life as lovers dare the dark
and learn less stubbornly than blinded Saul
that light comes from within or not at all.

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