Volume > Issue > Who Taught You?

Who Taught You?

A POEM

By Lorraine Bochler Eshleman | March 1986

Butterfly, who taught you

Your exotic dance?

Who made your wings melodious?
What makes your spirit chance

That life is meant for sailing,

That days are light and free?

Do you have a “nest egg”
Or only liberty?

To Phoebe*

Phoebe,

Gentle handmaid

Of us all,

Who assisted Paul

And others

Of the early church,

…

Paradoxical in the Extreme

Evidently a man of coarse, even slovenly, personal habits, Auden was as meticulous as T.S. Eliot in the precision of his verse.

Old Cathedral

This granite faith was pressed against the sky

And, wonder, stood alone;

The truth of…