The Pennsylvania Review

Get ready, stu­dents, for today’s sur­prise,
such that you barely would believe your eyes,
were you to see me now. I’m not the same,
except (just tem­porar­ily) my name.
Not that I’d can­cel quizzes, change the Gide
assign­ment, skip tuto­ri­als you need,
nor let you miss your weekly dose of Proust.
Instead, old chick­ens have come home to roost,

and I’m dis­tracted, dreamy, quite unfit
to play my role as you’ll remem­ber it.
So can you guess? “Good gra­cious, heav­ens above—
but yes … our old pro­fes­sor is in love!”
“A teenager” is what my daugh­ter said,
observ­ing that I seemed out of my head,
till I explained my gid­di­ness. “Why, Mom,
I’d think you’d made a for­tune in dot.com,

or got the Nobel Prize, or won a cruise
around the world for two. What stun­ning news!”
Severe, I was, of yore, quite for­mal, firm—
not cruel, but known for mak­ing stu­dents squirm
when ques­tioned on the pleonas­tic ne,
sub­junc­tive tenses, adjec­ti­val le.
I kept strict time; and if a stu­dent dared
to come in late, I paused a moment, glared,

resumed, and let him shuf­fle to his seat,
while oth­ers looked away or scraped their feet.
They must have thought I was a metronome,
French poetry and prose my only home,
hard notably in mat­ters of the heart:
“You love a girl; so what? The class must start!”
Unbend­ing as to tryst­ing out of town
when tests were sched­uled, I was seen to frown,

then wryly smile, explain­ing with a cough
it wasn’t advan­ta­geous to take off.
The wheel of for­tune turns: so in my case,
I’m now approx­i­mately in your place,
besot­ted, while you carry on careers.
Strange mol­li­fy­ing in my later years!
Con­sider then this com­ment by a sage:
To fall in love is good at any age.