SOL5: Mending Books (with apologies to Robert Frost)
A poem in the style of Mending Wall, by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a book,
That rips the pages breaking spine beneath
And drops and leaves the cover in the hall;
And makes gaps in stories where characters pass without touching.
The work of students is another thing:
I have come behind them and made repair
Where they have left no consecutive page after page
But they would have the one word out of hiding
To please the yawping teachers. The gaps I mean,
"It wasn't me" has seen or heard them made,
But all the same at summer break we find them there.
I let my assistant know beyond the door;
And on a day we meet to tape the spines
and salve their wounds to face another year.
To each the pages that have fallen to each
And some are torn and some so nearly trash
We have to use a spell to keep them whole:
"Stay together until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers out with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of school game,
of teachers versus students. It comes to little more:
We are all card catalog and they are lockers.
We say be kind to books,
They say, "Summer is an end to books."
But summer break is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in their heads:
"But why must it be an end to books?
Isn't it where there are no readers? But here there are readers.
Before I ripped a page I'd ask to know
What I was ripping out,
And who I was likely to offend.
Something there is that doesn't love a library,
That wants it down!" I could say, "Trolls," to them
But it's not trolls exactly, and I'd rather
They see it for themselves. I see them there,
Bringing a book grasped firmly by the spine in each hand, headed for the trash,
Like illiterate savages armed and prepared to face down the
crazed teacher expecting them to read in summer.
They move in darkness it seems to me,
Of self-imposed blindness and stubbornness.
They will not go beyond the sayings of every graduating class,
And they think themselves so clever, that they say it again:
"Summer is an end of books."
Something there is that doesn't love a book,
That rips the pages breaking spine beneath
And drops and leaves the cover in the hall;
And makes gaps in stories where characters pass without touching.
The work of students is another thing:
I have come behind them and made repair
Where they have left no consecutive page after page
But they would have the one word out of hiding
To please the yawping teachers. The gaps I mean,
"It wasn't me" has seen or heard them made,
But all the same at summer break we find them there.
I let my assistant know beyond the door;
And on a day we meet to tape the spines
and salve their wounds to face another year.
To each the pages that have fallen to each
And some are torn and some so nearly trash
We have to use a spell to keep them whole:
"Stay together until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers out with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of school game,
of teachers versus students. It comes to little more:
We are all card catalog and they are lockers.
We say be kind to books,
They say, "Summer is an end to books."
But summer break is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in their heads:
"But why must it be an end to books?
Isn't it where there are no readers? But here there are readers.
Before I ripped a page I'd ask to know
What I was ripping out,
And who I was likely to offend.
Something there is that doesn't love a library,
That wants it down!" I could say, "Trolls," to them
But it's not trolls exactly, and I'd rather
They see it for themselves. I see them there,
Bringing a book grasped firmly by the spine in each hand, headed for the trash,
Like illiterate savages armed and prepared to face down the
crazed teacher expecting them to read in summer.
They move in darkness it seems to me,
Of self-imposed blindness and stubbornness.
They will not go beyond the sayings of every graduating class,
And they think themselves so clever, that they say it again:
"Summer is an end of books."
Outstanding and artful parody--the blank verse, the parallel concepts, the sardonic humor. My former students know the Frost poem well. I would like to pass this on to them.
ReplyDeleteFeel free to share as long as you give me credit! Thanks for reading!
DeleteThis line really resonates with me - But why must it be an end to books?
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