These immobile halfmade faces listen

To my friend Sara lecture on Balzac.

Old Goriot hurries down the Rue Neuve Sainte Genevieve,

Into the garden of the Pension Vauquer,

With the jangled movement of his obsession.

“My daughters, my daughters,” he calls his lurch

Into nothing; a man without a net, a man

Whom the animal patience of these listening children

Will not keep from hitting bottom.

Sara’s worried face, her hands moving nervously

Over the bare desk, draw a noose

Of affectionate tension around the class.

She talks of King Lear and his daughters,

Goriot and his daughters, the grey street

Leading to the Pension Vauquer, between the stucco’d grimmace

Of houses, shops, until that clarity on the narrow bed,

Acrobatic laughter of footsoles gliding over nothing.

I think of the tremor of panic in Sara’s concentrated voice,

Its counter-note of joy, even triumph,

At saying everything—all of life, all of her life—

In this story about a man who lived

Against reason, failed and was magnified

As if saying it were a prayer, and a forgiveness.

The students’ voices stumble and fade,

Reading passages aloud, as if speech were an imperfect gift,

Yet there is something they have seen:

That fool Goriot who loved his daughters;

Sara’s stubborn will to live completely,

Which means talking, shepherding these young faces

Not toward knowledge maybe, but toward

A freedom ridiculous, failed, even magnificent,

Like that obsessed old man

Who lost everything, gained everything.