لكى تلخص قصيده مع د/ بسمه حسنى

The Lesson

Your father's gone, my bald headmaster said.
His shining dome and brown tabacco jar
splintered at once in tears. It wasn't grief.
I cried for knowledge which was bitterer
than any grief. For there and then I knew
that grief has uses - that a father dead
could bind he bully's fist a week or two;
and then I cried for shame, then for relief.

I was a month past ten when I learnt this:
I still remember how the noise was stilled
in school-assemply when my grief came in.
Some goldfish in a bowl quietly sculled
around their shining prison on its shelf.
They were indifferent. All the other eyes
were turned towards me. Somewhere in myself
pride like a goldfish flashed a sudden fin.






by antka .. elatify