The Academics

 

In a cold bare room they sit

On creaking chairs, all facing

One wall with one cloudy window.

-Idle squalid sitting-

As cracks run down decrepit walls

Like tears draining life

-spilling out onto ashes

Beneath the aching floorboards.

 

And gazing through the abject pane,

The static observers shout out

What they see with Oedipal eyes

Yet do not feel.

Their blind egregious grasping

Makes the cracks drain faster.

      -judgments turn bolder in reply

A million babbling cries,

Yet somehow all the same.

 

The lowly hanging light-bulb dims

And they are left huddled in the dark

Like a pack of shifty leering vultures

With only harried, hollow, jumbled, squawking

Claims for comfort.