Teaching the Tigers

Arms folded, wearing tiger masks,
students sit. Questions? No one asks.

Loss and grief, exile, return:
how much of it can they take in?

The Iliad: to go to war.
The Odyssey: and come back home.

Epic’s relentless forward motion,
lyric’s gossamer attention,

adventure parsed as allegory,
the iterations of the story,

and then to choose the right translation
for a fearful generation.

May poetry keep finding ways
of piercing the miasmal haze

and reclaiming a clear space
behind each young and guarded face

and washing through the walls that hide
whatever’s bubbling inside.

Fall semester’s almost done.
Time to think ahead to spring.

The days will soon be getting longer.
The students go on getting younger.

The days will soon be getting longer.
The world and I are getting older.

The poems are untouched by age.
A fresh semester turns the page.

• About
• Also by this author

Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas's new works include Piece by Piece (Paul Dry Books), Love and Dread, and her most recent book of poems, Pandemic Almanac. She is one of some forty translators of Nonnus's massive epic Tales of Dionysus (University of Michigan Press, 2022). Her new book of poems, Ghost Guest, will be published later this year.

Also by Rachel Hadas (see all)

• Voyage - March 2, 2023
• Though Much Is Taken, Much Abides:Fifteen Years of Literature & Medicine - May 22, 2022
• The Labyrinth, the Septic Tank - October 30, 2021

Author: Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas's new works include Piece by Piece (Paul Dry Books), Love and Dread, and her most recent book of poems, Pandemic Almanac. She is one of some forty translators of Nonnus's massive epic Tales of Dionysus (University of Michigan Press, 2022). Her new book of poems, Ghost Guest, will be published later this year. View all posts by Rachel Hadas