Another when,
and he ruled his Eng Lit classes
from the comforts
of tweeds well worn.
Today, though,
stumps of pencils, flags of paper,
were now secreted willy-nilly
deep in the rags
that called him home.
Teaching when and where he could,
urchin and ancient alike
found benefit
from his memory of a life
before his fall.
A name spelled here,
welfare application there,
laboured reading
of gutter-trapped headlines;
the street seemed less ugly
for his students.
Shorn heads and hard booted,
the Furies fell upon him
one cold night
for possession of his half bottle
of fortified wine.
Surrounded by his small blank bits of paper,
and short, sharpened stubs of pencils,
he resembled nothing so much
as an incomplete jigsaw puzzle,
its meaning not quite clear.