The Essay

Brian Culhane

I have asked my students once again to write on a theme. 

 The subject is not the end of the summer, 

 Though summer has once again ended and they are here. 

 The subject is not even the throes（痛苦的挣扎） of adolescence, 

Or the Shakespearean sonnet's use of the couplet. 

 No, theirs is such a dark and rich theme that their essays 

 Will look at first like Kafka's diaries—with self-portraits, 

 Wraiths（鬼，幽灵） or ominous clocks lodged in the margins. 

I want each to follow the footsteps of the psychopomp 

 And find the Gates of Horn that so many have stood before. 

 Should they be frightened, the pure ether may calm them, 

 Moving over their hot foreheads with a mother's palm. 

I watch them now bend low to their work, smudging ink, 

 Capitalizing proper nouns, stopping only to hurry forward, 

 Their nibs heavy oars, their scribbling an awkward rowing. 

 The dread of conclusions scrunches their shoulders. 

One girl wearing her hair up for the very first time 

 Raises her hand and, at my nod, walks up to my desk. 

 She has finished first. Her paragraphs have the weight 

 Of Etruscan tombs, and her face is that same shade of rose 

That glimmers in the background of Pompeian frescoes（壁画）. 

 I accept that her script is cuneiform and that a grave puzzle 

 Awaits my midnight's musing. For hers is the lost language 

 Of the young, a smooth stone I weigh in my palm, and let go.