He sighed; we could not reach his vision.
But perhaps there was a way: he turned his eyes
to the casement high on the classroom wall.
There are four panes there, right? Yes, sir.
Ignore, for, a moment, then, the years of dust,
the brown recluse crouching in her corner,
and the crack of doom from there to upper left.
See each pane as a pipe, with water of life
pouring through to make some desert bloom.
Each is a two-inch pipe. Now, how big a pipe,
boys, is the whole window? Now we could see
what the old man saw: a four inch pipe,
four times the water, and not two. This, and
the brown recluse, and the crack of Doom,
and our young lives straining at belt and collar,
sweating in the basement of the old school gym,
we would not forget. We felt his intellect
as our own, and for once we were afraid to shrug,
to lift our brows, to disdain this world of men
that so suddenly dwelt among us.

Late in the afternoon, while the sun still beat
the schoolyards flat with its authority,
I stepped among the cool beech copses,
heading for my usual hickory grove. No birds
were singing, nor were there voices of insects.
This is the beginning, I said, though I was unsure
of what. My childhood lagged; it sat in the shade
of the trees, calling me by my forgotten name,
while I walked on, and on, never heeding.