The front row desks were always empty.
I never understood why.
Second row was all smacking lips
of those who recited lessons by heart.

In the middle, were the timid ones
who took notes and stole the occasional chalk.
And in the last row, young boys craning their heads
toward beauty marks on the necks of blond girls.

I don't remember the teacher's name, the lab,
or the names of the portraits on the wall,
except the orthopedic irony clinging to his stumped arm
like foam at the Cape of Good Hope.

When his healthy arm would point out Bismarck,
the hollow sleeve looked in an unknown direction.
We couldn't tell which of us was the target, which not,
questioning this way
even that minimal identity
we already thought we owned.

From his insatiable mouth flew out battle dates,
names, causes. Never resolutions, nor winners,
because we could hardly wait for the bell
to write our own history
those days when we knew roughly everything.

But sometimes, his hollow sleeve
was warm and human like a cricket-filled summer night
waiting to land somewhere. On a valley or roof.
It searched for a hero among us,
not among the athletic or sparkly-eyed ones,
but among those "stained" with innocence.

One day, each one of us will be that teacher
in front of a seventeen-year-old boy or girl with a beauty
mark on her neck.
And the desks on the front row will remain empty,
suspicious like the stumped arm of history
which makes the other arm appear omnipotent.

translated by Ani Gjika