The Dean

The Dean

I believed in all that once but then
Was asked will you steer this or that
Committee department school
Through waters toothy with rocks 
And as my reputation as someone
Not afraid to make hard decisions
Grew I was asked to make them
More often which had the effect
Of hardening my heart which was
Once soft as the hearts
Of the students sleeping
In their tents on the Quad
I was just like them once reading
The unbearable lightness of being
In the arms of a eucalyptus tree
In the hills high above Berkeley
High of course and my dissertation
Was on the power of literature 
To influence political movements
Like how kids in Moscow
Would recite Akhmatova 
To stay calm in the melee
So I do hear what you’re saying
In the innermost part of me
A kind of grove where light
Still trembles feebly like the light
In a dream you almost remember