Poetry (Learning by Teaching)

My Clever Pupils By OMAR MOHD NOOR i my teaching is dull today, i can see dullness being powdered onto the faces on my pupils making them turn to one another trying to find a more active lesson they always expect their malay teacher to provide them interesting lessons about broken promises that have neglected them about the ignorance enveloping their kampongs about the disappointments killing their parents, thinking that I am an antidote to ignorance but experiences have not made me any cleverer for they are nothing but reconfirmations of past inabilities and past mistakes ii to break from the nausea that is monotony we sometimes laugh, make jokes about one another we play, trying to outdo one another we become silly, trying to show that mistakes must be made before one can become clever but, i still have not been able to make them realize that the pursuit of genuine education knows no holidays, only rest can temporarily impede learning i have also told them that education is a cat that follows them from birthdays to deathdays iii a bright and precocious girl questioned me about what to call a woman whose husband is dead i said widow somebody unattentive said window (a learning laughter was heard) iv i hope they become what they want to become as long as they are not thieves, robbers and philistines as long as their coming manhood and womanhood do not become the fuel for the technological fire burning us, making us useless and spent kayu bakau. v i know they wish me well, too but none knows that teaching them is an extension of the deferred education which i have always been seeking vi i do not know what they and i will become because the premature answers are well hidden in the disappointing amenities afforded vii when i am about to die i could bang my chest once and only once i could say to myself, an autoboast? i was their teacher and their pupil