Paper Grading


One snowflake, a few, a dozen. . . mere flurries;
a couple billion more and you’re snowed in.
One cancer cell, twenty. . . an anomaly to watch;
add a hundred thousand and you’re defunct.
Sooner or later, Marx remarked hopefully, a 
quantitative change turns into a qualitative one.  
 
The essays lie on the floor, neat as a fresh consignment
of mortar shells. In the end, value only comes from scarcity.
Good ones will be rare, of course, but even of the worthy
there can be too many.  Jam-pack your museum and 
masterpieces seem cheaper.  Europe’s got too much 
Rubens and not enough Vermeer.  But the bulk
will be mediocre efforts, joyless and lukewarm.
You can smell the duress they were done under.
 
If there were only ten or twenty I’d remark
on every paragraph, praise each graceful phrase,
pose queries to provoke one more foot of delving.
I’d explain patiently why based off of and 
amount of troops drive me nuts; I’d draw a
broken statue beside its plinth or a Cuisinart
crammed with a battalion of conscripts.
 
But then there might be one emitting a yellow aura,
not a dead report mais un essai vrai that stirs, 
a veritable voyage, not a walk around the block;
a forest trek to a misty meadow drying in the sun;
a drop down a shaft into blackness veined with gold;
the ascent of a mountain to a prospect of some
unexpected province, prosperous and green.





After the Exam

                            I

The coffee rushes to meet the cup which
so embraces the darkness as to become
dark itself.  Smoke unfolds in the
suddenly uncharged office air, like thought.
Take off the armband, put up your feet, breathe.

How was the hall?  Filled up, crammed with
hyperventilations, expectations,
alternately seated, brimful with the
anxiety of the special occasion;
the proctors and proctees grudgingly trapped
by one another; the lights too bright; the time
about to be savagely scrawled across
the broad tabula rasa; bluebooks stacked
and uniform as artillery shells.
Then whispers slowly ceased; heads bent over;
faces screwed themselves into the set task.
Questions begot answers.

                          II

Students take your pens and write— 
though you may be scared, uptight—   
answers that just might reveal
part of what you know or feel.
Tests like roses age and fade;
in a week or two your grade,
that fresh bloom, will turn rotten
and shortly after be forgotten.
Still, this jagged electricity
bears an odd sort of felicity. 
  
It’s harsh but true: the ordained doom
of the cramped and clammy womb
is set upon us, every one.
The clock’s a proctor; till you’re done
the world will set you test on test
and scarcely note who does the best.

                        III

The discipline of the ribs holds the heart.

Compassion is futile, for what can you 
do short of spoiling the moment by shouting:
“Here, here are the answers.  Now go home
and stop suffering!”  No, a test is the 
freest of all possible gifts.  The earth
is full of stones against which you can hone
your knives.

                   Ribs do not merely make a cage.