THE REPLACEMENT TEACHER


She’d come as a replacement teacher.
The smell of rugger socks made her timid.
But she was attractive, came on pure.
She wroughted on about King Lear
’n cuckoo daughters. How the old bantam
suffered, like she actually knew the guy.

I remember the whole thing made me itch.
Had she been betrayed by pals, by family?
Had she ever got soaked and slept in a ditch?
Had she survived when hope had gone?
Hardly!
            I went, with full bottle, after class
saying, “Miss, where is your qualification
for understanding pain?”
                         Her eyes fused.
she rolled a sleeve. Slate-
fresh, a cracked inlay on her smooth
skin;  4 2 6 9 1 5 3 1…..Belsen.

“My son”, she said, “it hurt like hell -
they didn’t do this with a ballpoint pen.
And they killed everyone I knew.
And the reason they gave for not murdering me?
I was good with a shovel, at least for a Jew.
Strange, I’d thought of myself as a little girl
with nice hair and wide brown eyes.
Will you teach, when you’re older?” She smiled.







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