• “The Professor”

    A Poem by Shane McCrae

    The air is colder than the light in the air

     

    No fog     no smoke     but the light hangs on the air

     

    Like fog     like smoke     I’m walking to the bakery

     

    On Amsterdam     across from the cathedral

     

     

    A middle-aged     man wearing a tweed cap and

     

    A limp blue Members Only jacket passes me

     

    And a black face mask with a white skull

     

    Printed on it     but death is a professor everywhere

     

     

    What have you learned he asks

     

    What do you know

     

    I turn the corner and the sidewalk’s full of stu-

     

    dents     everybody’s parents sent them hoping

     

     

    Back     elsewhere     the professor hangs his jacket on his chair

     

    Sighs off his cap     tightens his mask

     

    __________________________________

    the Sewanee Review

     

    “The Professor” by Shane McCrae, reprinted with the permission of the Sewanee Review. Copyright © 2021 by Shane McCrae. 


    Shane McCrae
    Shane McCrae
    Shane McCrae is the author of five previous books of poetry: In the Language of My Captor, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award; The Animal Too Big to Kill, winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky / Editor’s Choice Award; Forgiveness Forgiveness; Blood; and Mule. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.





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