Graduate School

1979

One recalls three professors typing

Three doors, three typewriters-

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Keys tapping paper echo down

Grey tile halls

Embracing their interment.

I see the bearded face of Mr. Cube

Master of the elegant retreat

Into anti-emotional

Intellectual repose.

All the quiet, careful feet

I feel like I got sprung rythm

Ya know what I mean

Ya know, ya know,

Ya know, ya know,

(Watch me take this poem in for a lay-up)

Ya know, ya know, ya know,

Ya know, ya know, ya know,

Ya know, ya know, ya know-

One sees an inverse relationship

(The kid spots an opening)

Between time spent typing

(He eludes scholarship)

Papers on Shakespeare's fools

( Beats Dr. J. to the lane)

And sense made thereof,

(Hook shot)

One's way being not always lit by time.

(Swish!)

Box, not yet a typer, who

Labors under Tommy's laws

And wallows in Wally's ways,

Having shaken Shakespeare off

And dismissed the budding Yeats,

Looks up at this absurd inquest-

What say you now, says he?

(Rebound for the kid)

Oh, and if I had gone back to

(Fast break)

Tell them all, to shake that hall, I'd

(Ball slapping floor, feet rumble)

Shout like one possessed that

(Bounding leap for the hoop)

Eliot was wrong at last and

(Double reverse in midair)

Wallace Stevens kiss my

(Slow motion slam dunk)

AAAHHHHHSSSSSSS.

(Crowd roars.)