Professor

His soul is stiff with academic starch,
Impervious, he bulges toward eagerness,
Then crackles into dry scholastic jargon
Of Recent Publications.
Flat, creased, he folds away ideas,
Indelibly labelled,
His touch smooth and sure
From years of neat handling
of Disturbing Issues.
No warmth, but to sere freshness
Into flat despair
Or mirrored reflection of Authority;
No light, but to dazzle unaccustomed eyes
Into blinking conformity
With scholarship.
Beyond living, rigor mortis,
In the winding sheet of finality.

(no date, but probably late 1940s)