High school lessons in perspective.
“I remember ‘Fermez la bouche,’ not, I think, ever directed at me …”
To enjoy this feature as a broadside, drag the image to your desktop–or scroll down to read it in plain text. This poem is also available, in slightly different format, on Medium.
0
Don’t Know Much About the French I Took
–
a letter of apology to Miss Buckshaw & Mrs. Dunham
–
I silently disapproved when they said, “Let’s go French
Miss Buckshaw,” though I do know that I love you
for trying, even with your embarrassing Deep
South pronunciation, to get me to parle français.
–
I apologize now for my inability to talk turkey here,
for being so in the dark in the City of Light
and for imagining your sour breath and slipping
dentures, your ancient, phlegmy spit. I remember
“Fermez la bouche,” not, I think, ever directed
at mute me. And “Ouvrez vos livres ” comes back
in a Georgia accent, we all said so, even
the tongue-tied. Danny and Becky and Marsha,
the popular kids, made A’s, I think now, and were
merciless in the halls before and after your class
where I sat in a fog of daydreams and discomfort.
I wonder how many times they’ve been to Paris,
if they were ever able to talk Sartre on the rue
du Whatever, if they are, still, high-school cool.
Miss Rickshaw, Miss Buckshot, you never
showed me even a small kindness, but
I suspect you’ll forgive me now for a mouth
full of English and the occasional, inappropriate burst
of desperate Italian. So: Merci, Madame, Merci.
–
And forgive me, Mrs. Dunham, for saying in class
that my little sister could write this Hemingway crap,
for thinking that “Big Two-Hearted River” was about
camping and could use some Byronic boffing
and Faulknerian flair.
–
– 0 Of course,
I didn’t really say those things out loud,
but I did imply them, preferring showmen
to shell-shocked fishermen. Shelley’s “The Cloud”
and Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon” were my touchstones
in those days. Forgive me for raining on
your professional parade. You were kind to me,
a chronically late, horrifically self-conscious
teenager, said I might be a writer one day. Grazie mille,
and ti prego, perdonami, Mrs. Dunham, Miss Buckshaw.
Rest in peace, wherever you are. I turned out all right,
I guess, in the end—if this is the end.
*********************************************************************************************
Ron Smith is a former Poet Laureate of Virginia. Currently Writer-in-Residence at Saint Christopher’s School in Richmond, he is the author of the books Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery (to be issued this year in a second edition from MadHat Press) and three books from LSU Press: Moon Road, Its Ghostly Workshop, and The Humility of the Brutes. In 2018 he was a Featured Poet at the American Library in Paris, where he also read new poems in the Salon Eiffel on the Eiffel Tower. He contributed to Broad Street’s “Rivals & Players” issue.
