The Teacher’s Sonnet

Having arrived home depressed and weary
after all day in the classroom, talking, shouting,
watching for noise: once almost clouting
a child because he seemed a bit too cheery . . .
head yearning for holiday, eyes not up to it, bleary;
collapsed at home; the day’s work doubting,
term’s even, the whole job, the teacher’s very name flouting –
then turning to a pile of books to be marked in a dreary
terrible acceptance of life to be lived through, I turned
the radio on first . . . the Seventh Symphony
in A Major. I could not turn it off. I unlearned
all the dogma of day. Wondering how he
would have felt if he heard his work, briefly I burned,
the spirit of Beethoven then freeing me.