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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Dave Hall

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The Knowledge

And I have been
A Supply Teacher,
Yes, I have known.
I have arrived too early
In the early morning staff-room
In my antediluvian suit
With the indefatigably wrong lapels
And I have sat
In the sunless Corner of Oblivion
With my ham and pickle sandwiches
And hugged my bitter soul,
Alone, as one apart, super-numerical.
And I have sauntered to that Place of Anathema,
Far beyond the windy bike-sheds
To roll, lugubriously, my own.
I have stumbled through
The labyrinthine blare
Of gusty, unfamiliar corridors
In search of incontrovertibly bottom sets,
Have borne the patronage
Of tittering adolescent girls
Who carded their medusan hair
Through all the long, endless reaches
Of lost, forgotten, golden afternoons.
And I have watched the school bus
Sailing away, departing
And listened to the silence as it settled,
My dwindled spirit flat as the bottom
Of my tupperware container
Where I have sometimes fancied that I heard
The ham in my last ham sandwich glisten,
And all around heaped high the ineffable,
Inviolable, unwanted Word.
Yes, I have been
A Supply Teacher:
 I have known.

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