Mangham

Somewhere between bells the right angles staggeredAnd Mangham poised, sensing thunder,Something crookèd in the straight lines of his brain.Chalk dust rose upward. The blackboard alteredIts screech, and the teeth of the children were setOn edge.

Above our doped heads the ceiling whitenedAs the part in Mr. Mangham’s hairLost its way; a gray lock fell;Behind him as he turned, tawOf Cosines. He pressed the middle of his browWith a handkerchief, looking at all of usAs he stepped

Quickly out of the room. In the centerOf the high school a sound arose from us,A hive sound, amazing, increasing. I tore up my noteTo Serena Hill, and leaned and spokeBoldly to her in person. At the thresholdMr. Mangham appeared with a handkerchiefFull of lumps

He had raided the lunchroom icebox, and heldA knotted cloth full of soupy cubesDripping down his gray face: held itLeft-handed, lifted his goodRight arm. The signs appeared again,The blackboard filledWith crazy proofs,

Lines wavering on the powdery blackness,The dark night of the adolescent mind,Conceiving drunken constellations,Equilateral triangles, others of thirty-sixty, ninety degrees, traced by a seismograph,All figures melting from the ice-colors of his chalk.

It should be in a tent in the desertThat I remember Mangham’s last dayIn that class, for his cracked voice was speakingOf perfection, sphere-music,Through the stroke that blazed in his mindAs our hive toned downAnd Pythagoras howled

For mor ice: it should be in contemplative sandOr in a corner that I ought to sitOn a high stool, Mangham’s age now,On my head a conical hat, a dunce capCovered with moons and stars and jagged bandsOf brain-lightning, the ceiling above meWhite with the chalk motes

Of stars from my shoulders, the night blazonedWith the angles of galaxies formingTo a silent music’s accords,Proving once and for all that I have no headFor figures, but knowing that that did not stopMangham for one freezing minuteOf his death

From explaining for my own good, from the goodSide of his face, while the otherMixed unfelt sweat and ice water, what I neverCould get to save my soul: those things that, onceEstablished, cannot be changed by angels,Devils, lightning, ice or indifference:Identities! Identities!

From Buckdancer’s Choice (1965)