An Elementary School Classroom in a slum

Far far from gusty waves, these children's faces. Like rootless weeds the torn hair around their paleness.The tall girl with her weighed-down head.The paper seeming boy with rat's eyes. The stunted unlucky heir of twisted bones, reciting a father's gnarled disease, His lesson from his desk. At back of the dim class, One unnoted,sweet& young, her eyes live in a dream of Squirrel's game, in tree room, other than this.

on sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare's head Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map the world it's world.And yet, for these Children, these windows, not this world,are world, Where all their future's painted in fog, A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky, Far Far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.

Surely Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example, With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal- For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children Wear skins peeped through by bones, and spectacles of steel With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.

All their time and space and foggy slum so blot their maps with the slums as big as doom.
Unless, governor, teacher, inspector,visitor
This map becomes their window and these windows That open on their lives like crouching tombs Break. O break open. Till they break the town, And show the children to the fields and all their world Azure on their sands, to let their tongues Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open The history theirs who's language is the sun.