“Memorize ‘Dover Beach’ for Monday”
As for rioting, the old Roman way of dealing for that is
always the right one: flog the rank and file and fling the
ringleaders from Tarpeian Rock.
—Matthew Arnold,
…………………………..…“The Duty to Suppress”
Suppress this, I gestured
and slammed the classroom door, not just
on a bespectacled teacher desperate for tenure,
but on the entire nineteenth century’s craven
imperialism. After all I was a high-school sophomore,
so there was no way I was going
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, to think
about a fop with porkchop whiskers
who, intending to be conciliatory,
crossed out crucify the slaves
and, instead, flog the rank and file.
Flog you! I shouted at Algernon Charles Swinburne
and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
…………………….I didn’t wish to learn
how Matthew Arnold stayed up all night
grading exams by the bedside
of his tubercular son. The author of Culture and Anarchy
romping with piglets
……………………in his garden?
Teaching his daughter figure eights
on the pond? The day before he died
leaping a fence
for the pure pleasure of being able to do so.
I wanted my enemies
to have the decency to be consistent:
……………………pricks or prigs. Not to have
been fitted for leg irons as a child.
If I gave in and felt sorry for all the poets
who didn’t know when to shut up,
let me worry about the entire nineteenth century
and even the poor teachers who made us read
that panic disguised as elegy,
……………………I’d not make it
to my next class, much less survive one more
day on this planet, its confused alarms,
it ignorant armies, its darkling plain.
by Christopher Bursk
from The First Inhabitants of Arcadia
University of Arkansas Press, 2006