your greatness too immense
and Marcus my defenceless tears
Zbigniew Herbert
I don’t know and it doesn’t matter
if there was ever an age of light and learning.
Mine is ended.
I pursued letters across the floor, through soup
and finally on walls and paper everywhere.
My two teachers were tireless.
Years before I went to school, my mother’s wisdom
was endless, my father’s justice inexplicable.
I never could cry down the classroom demagogues.
Since then I have sought the simple republic
in the love and politics of the one world,
never at home. Utopia. Me Tarzan.