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