Monday, June 19, 2017

On Campus


The black and golden slaves of florid sugar canes
Were flying back and forth and pollinating
And worms were squirming on the cruel hooks
As anglers roughly used them for the baiting.
The water of the lake was blue,
Reflection of the skies so true
And students for exam results were waiting.




Among the girls there (and the boys) most worried was
A girl as beautiful as sweet is honey,
A girl as gentle and as courteous as you wish
A waitress to be, if you give her money
And nurses in the hospital
If ever out of health you fall:
Except to her own self, her mood was sunny.




But thinking of exam results
Was taxing all her better moods
Her heart was down into her shoes
The thoughts like heavy catapults
Were throwing questions like the stones
On mind's defenses (not her bones!)



She worried to have answered wrong
Omitting this and failing that
In triflings (judged by talking at
A bar about it or a song
Retelling all the history),
And yet she feared too great they be.



A fellow student from the course she chanced to see.
A trifler and a dabbler in the study.
Disordered and thus over all the faculty
A story of his own - and was he muddy
In brain and mind and memory?
Pain in the ass of faculty
Except she was to him a kind of buddy.




Like oft before unpacking all the sandwiches
She had prepared at home and also coffee
In thermos bottle, she called out his name
And changed a bit of food for bars of toffee :
First cheese they ate, then sausages,
Then coffee with a toffee tress
Her mood was really better then a little while
But after that a moment came, was stuffy.




- "Oh boy, I think I failed the test."
- "Perhaps you did and so did I,
At least we gave it some good try."
- "You can't have failed, you are the best."
- "No, that is you, though well I do."
- "Your doing well is very true!"


- "O Kay, suppose we fail it all,
Why worry, life has more to give
Than studies, though I like to live
Among the books so classical."
- "And so do I, but right you are
(Though, frankly, you exceed by far


The standard talent for the college course,
You're absent minded like an old professor)"
- "Don't make me pround, I'm haughty as it is
And getting penances for it from my confessor!"
- "Ah yes," she answered then and there:
"You're Catholic, or so I hear!"
- "Indeed, that is a fact you need not guess for!"



Then rang a bell, out their professor came
"Results are here," he said with gusto.
He pinned the list unto a message board
(The solid object you can trust - o!)
A throng of students would be first
To verify the best or worst
But girl and boy no quicker than they must - o!



Their talk went on behind the rest
They wanted to approach it last
And really were at all not fast.
"Come on, you two, you scored the best!"
A comrade shouted to the two,
And so they did, they had to do.


She had no faults and he had one
From negligence, there is no doubt,
They both knew what they were about.
The test was done and it was fun
To get the papers they had wrote
And read each red professor's note.


They gave the papers back to archive them
As these were those that were the most important
Of all the year. Our couple saw the victory
As somewhat of an optimistic portent.
And yet they knew within their heart
That scholarship and even art
Do matter less than matters more important.



The black and golden slaves of florid sugar canes
Were flying back and forth and pollinating
And worms were squirming on the cruel hooks
As anglers roughly used them for more baiting.
The water of the lake was blue,
Reflection of the skies so true
And anglers for more fish were waiting.

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