Adrienne Rich — In a Classroom

Talking of poetry, hauling the books arm-full to the table where the heads bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud, talking of consonants, elision, caught in the how, oblivious of the why: I look in your face, Jude, neither frowning nor nodding, opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table: a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking What I cannot say, is me. For that I came.