The teacher asked
what was poetry.
My hand shot up,
thought why was he asking
such obvious, silly thing?
I stood up and intoned:
\"Poetry was juxtaposition
of words,
arranged in the most beautiful way
so it could sprout flowers
without a plant.
Poetry was the pretence
to know,
the pretence to tell,
yet, the high art of saying
precisely... what?
Finally,
poetry thrives in
obtuse ambiguity
as the bacteria proliferate
in dark damp corners.\"
A cane landed on my right thigh,
it stung like crazy,
felt like mustard flowers
dancing all around;
another landing of that cane
made me blabber:
\"Sir, I was wrong.
Poetry is the high art of the artifices,
that my unicellular intellect
is too feeble to grasp.\"