The book might've been happy
If he actually had a wife
And she was Jewish instead of
Admissions-friendly Irish,
And the Joyce decoding guide
Was discovered at the same time as the text
-- So much greatness here at Harvard;
This one has scaled Matterhorns,
That one has moved them --
They don't seem as pleased to be telling me this
As I am presumed to be in hearing,
But that's why I am here, somehow,
To listen with compassion
-- 13 years of positive thoughts and
I'll be on my way, they say --
It is an education,
More than the tricks of the trade
To ladder and cheat one's escape
Through the hatch of trap-door courses.
Is there anyone here
-- A quantum entanglement theorist, say,
In some unlabeled basement crypt --
Who is free of the ennui
That blows in from the Consequence River?
People blow through here as well,
In the end, to learn how to keep
The lies they tell themselves
From being found out by others
-- The others, at least, who don't matter.
There's a room somewhere
In this yellowing air
Where a poet once sat,
Before the sky became a ceiling.
