Adult Education 

 

She is old enough to be my mother.

I’m afraid of what she’ll say next.

She has what she herself would never say

(because it is a cliché) –

a ‘formidable intellect’.

There are things in her life

that have made her sad and formless.

Everything falls.

I find myself clucking and cooing over her.

Once I touched her arm. 

I am a fool.

I’m afraid of her saying to me

“That is simply not true”

and me knowing it.

My mind jumps up and down in its bag

and wants to get out

when she walks in the room.

When she says my name

(which is not at all often)

I feel – briefly – of some worth.

She once said to me

“I should like to hear you on Auden”

and I lay awake composing

a cold and brilliant talk 

called About Suffering

which I had myself telling her

over tea in the canteen.

There are things in her life – 

but there’s never time.

I watch her shuffle out 

with her plastic bags full

of fourteenth-century Italian poetry

which is the class she goes to after mine.