Test
(A Glimpse From My Classroom Window
While Students Take a State Math Exam)
©May 9th, 2014
By Vijaya Sundaram
Trees, a brick wall
Fighting a grey sky.
Glass windows reflect
And reflect back
Human and non-human images,
Fleeting and busy, still and silent,
Over-layered, screen upon screen
While cars flow by,
An easy stream, swift and sure,
On a road where sound
May or may not exist.
Not in my quiet classroom, anyway –
Here, where heads are bent
Over official papers
Lives the Mind,
Where only the rustle of papers,
And the scratch of pencils,
And the shuffle of abstracted
Student feet reveal a Supreme Force –
Thought, turned into abstract
Abstruse, enigmatic
Symbol, a language not
Everyone masters, but which
Life and Matter know.
Cellular and atomic
Is their knowledge.
And the Laws were
Already written, before
My students and I
Before everyone,
And everything,
Everywhere, everywhen,
Ever were.
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