Everyone Remembers a Good Teacher

One of the Forgotten Army.
Classics was hard, coming back.
Stood the seniors at the rear,
his beady eyes smoothed the rows,
Elvis after Elvis. March fifty-six.
Cross-legged first-years on the yard,
you and I, not yet friends,
holding it there, on command.
The way he got silence,
the stillness when he sat down,
third from the Head,
the broken window side,
and the camera raked us like a gun.

Dic, duc, fer, fac,
second person singular active,
irregular imperatives.
‘Dick’s duck had fur on its fack’,
he’d snap. Lest we forget.
Regula, regulae, feminine,
the ruler, of the ruler
the edge, sharp,
two crisp applications
to taut cheeks for each mistake.

Enjoyed that? Yes sir,

Semper et in aeternum.

The Pax Romana that got results.

Watch out, Joe’s coming,
a boy would hiss,
like his jailed Japs,
smarting after the bomb.
Yes, Joe’s coming, he’d roar,
exploding the room, sending

shock waves of loud conjugations -

amo, amas, amat -

from his empire
to the far ends of the school.

Dinner-hours, we helped him
get his Greek back, you and I:
Odyssean trips on mugs of tea.
Breathed the smoke in his lungs,
the closest we ever got.
Read ‘Goodbye to All That’, he said,

and gave us his vademecum.

.