Teaching and Learning - Vijaya Sundaram

Posts Tagged ‘ Teaching and Learning ’

Listening to Poetry
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 26th, 2013

The children listen, in a spell
As the words of the poem we
Read aloud together in class,
Unreel and hook them, unawares.

Poetry, that smiling looter
That thief of all cynical hearts
That bandit of their mundane minds
Captures them, binds them all, tightly.

For a moment, cynicism
Is suspended, pushed, held at bay
By words, written quite long ago
Among differently moulded minds.

Then, mundane memory floods back
And, unwilling to be found out,
They replace their masks and move on
To the next silly or sublime sphere.

If I could capture their quiet
Concentration, their absorption,
I’d create an essential oil
With which to make a sweet perfume.

I’d keep it at my lonely desk
Spray it into the air near me,
And inhale deeply when sudden
Unexpected despair grabs me.

I’d forget my ache, then, and smile
I’d remind myself that this is
Why I love to teach and why I stay:
Concentration concentrated,

The shared delight, the rich shaping
Of our mutual enjoyment:
Pleasure distilled and stoppered in time
And fragrant in our memory.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~