Summer School
The girls from Austria play
at the piano, grand and low down in the window bay,
Tea is served, at eight prompt, upon a tray.
The gentlemen recline in velvet green
and oak-carved panelling completes the scene
of some Vienna salon circa. 1817.
Upstairs, the Spanish boys make grand salutes,
crash bouldering through doors set tuck-firm by their roots
for solid generations of the best Scotch stock,
swing wide as – such impertinence! – jaws in shock
and rebound from their hinges with a crash
from walls not built for Mediterranean dash.
Till long past ten they strut and stride with cockerel grace
and stamp and roar,
and rampage terrier-mad as toreador
through stairway, venerable hall, and corridor
until imperious from the kitchen comes the call,
and then - Mama! – they file obedient in their lines,
to where Lourdes laboriously grinds
the pepper mill, and parts tomatoes from their rinds
to make passata for their bedtime snack.
In the piano room, the sweet waltzes cease
their mannered tick-tock from the mantelpiece,
Enter Andalucians, upstage left
bearing bruschetta; the maidens are bereft
and clear-eyed brows are knit at this most rude
and shambling disruption of their Cecelian solitude.
The boys shoot glances, only glances, bent
under dark brows and awkward, thoughtful, and
after the crumbs are spent, scrape up the might
to stretch and chew the English word ‘goodniiiight’
as they retreat. And this is what they learn.
Sehr gut, sehr gut, meine Mädchen, danke schön.
