In the Faculty Lounge

I hover by the box marked mine as pale
as a lover waiting his fair dame’s abuse,
watching the manicured fingers sort the mail

till I may dangle in my daily news.
A list of books I cannot buy or read.
A device to solve my problems, once it’s mastered.

Rejections right and left. An ad for seed.
A reader writes to tell me I’m a bastard.
Colleagues are sweeping past me like racehorses.

My family regrets I turned out rotten.
My friends are getting ulcers or divorces.
PAST DUE are bills for goods I have forgotten.

Remember that young poet whom I failed?
I see that he just won a Pulitzer Prize.
Another, whom I passed, has just been jailed

and needs a reference, graduateschoolwise.
A committee to eliminate committees
wants me to chair a meeting all day Sunday.

Foundation heads from all the Eastern cities
will drop in for a chat at dawn on Monday.
Just think how here and there across the nation,

across the campus, even across the seas,
people address to me such flagellation!
I pant beside the mailbox on my knees.