The Professor Of Philosophy
1948 Czechoslovakia – 2005 Alaska

We must stay! Said the student,
And more was learned in a day,
Than all his lean years.
Posters were printed for the people.
But soldiers were kingfishers,
Darting through dissent.
They were swift, and his friends not quick enough.
He had the luck of the minnow.

That night,
He smuggled himself back to his father’s house,
And did not leave for five forgetful years.
His mother, the cookery tutor,
Was happy to store him in the larder.
The father fabricated false partitions,
And the hours were slowly consumed.

By day, his father scoured libraries
And stole his boy an education.
By night, he crept into the living room,
Stuffed blankets into the piano
And forged his silent sonatas.

The country stopped.
Eyes and lips were careful.
Neighbors could be more than instruments of gossip.
Borders grew tight as drums,
Beating out the rhythm of the east.

Five years fled, like refugees.
His teeth rotted for lack of pantry-visiting dentists.
The train dispatcher father
Built a coffin out of card,
Laid it in a bed of coal
And soused it in vinegar to put dogs’ noses out of joint.

His son folded himself into that dark envelope,
Without a kiss.
The lid was sealed,
And as the steam train shuffled slowly West,
He wondered if success would always smell so sour.

First Published, Poems With Attitude Uncensored By
Andrew Fusek Peters And Polly Peters, Hodder, 2003