The Music Teacher

Boarding-School Sonnet

The music teacher, dread in this girls' world,
seemed all their fates — to them — doom
wrapped in one small man whom wild
dreams raptured with in each dark room
at summer nightfall. Singing they
would rise on tides of dreams — love
lave, lay naked by — surge upon do, me, ray,
and 'never, never, do not ask me, leave',
Each, in her heart, felt a base earthbound
urge to seize his flesh in hand
and leap all hidebound laws
to fasten him one moment, swiftly hers.
Oh, but what trick of fate the dream destroys.
He was deported for his affairs, with boys.