Landgrant
Professor Poems
by Michael
Bugeja
excerpts from Talk
University of Arkansas Press
1998
I.
Lament of the Landgrant Professor
My Ph.D.
was passed to me by a dean
Named Billie in a Big Eight stadium
On the Astroturf. I saw the future then.
My mentor mispronounced my Maltese name
And hooded me in the flamboyant silks
Of my ancestors--my colors, gilt and teal--
All the accouterments of academe
As I had dreamed of them in my boyhood,
Budding Giordano Bruno. Oh to teach
In towers of real ivy--Harvard, Princeton, Yale--
Or ones with gothic names: Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe!
Trustees would take arcane, exotic posts
As missionaries or ambassadors to Belize,
And no one would raise cattle or sink wells;
Tycoons who poink tobacco into goblets
Would not slap me on the back at barbecues.
My office would have two doors, one to class
In a room with steppe rows and marble floors,
One to the lobby where busts of Copernicus,
Kepler and Galileo appoint the walls.
My basement office leaks and has no windows,
And two of my colleagues have passed away
Because my legislature would not pay
To remove asbestos from the cracked ceiling.
(I eulogized them at their memorials
Without mentioning their melanomas.)
And the students, bless them, who cannot spell
Or punctuate when I get them, who believe
A baccalaureate is a work permit
And a keg of cool beer, a rite of passage:
How to save them? Emeriti die here
The way salesmen do in Arthur Miller plays
As flunkies, and yet how few in his or her
Prime as professor would admit what I am
Now in my fortieth year, in full viropause,
Lamenting the waste of time and talent,
Becoming eccentric out of echt boredom,
Composing maudlin poems instead of
Maintaining my labs in a bleached cotton coat
As the ceiling flakes on my slumped shoulders?
II.
The Landgrant Professor Comforts
An Untenured Assailant
In the Parking Lot of Piggly Wiggly
It was dusk.
A dark-complected man was bobbing
Up and down on the driver side of your Celica.
What else were you to think besides a theft?
Of course it seemed that I was picking locks
Instead of loading sacks of groceries
On the passenger seat of a beat-around Buick.
I wish you hadn't spun me from behind
And called me wop--I'm actually Maltese--
But have been spun before and labeled worse.
I doubt you know my archipelago
Between the continent of Africa
And Sicily. If this had happened there,
I'd have to kill you on the spot or lose
Respect. (I'm only joking, naturally.)
You're not the first white Anglo-Saxon male
To err, if that makes any difference.
I shop here after class in suit and tie
And patrons always ask about the products,
Assuming I'm the manager. I tell them
I'm a physicist,
full prof. My only goal
So far in life is fusion, melding nuclei,
Bringing them together, much like people:
Me and you. Only first they must collide,
As we have done today, to overcome
What science calls repulsion. I'll clarify.
You saw me near your car and felt repulsed,
Accelerated toward me in your Nikes.
The closer you came, the stronger you felt
Repelled by my appearance. After all,
I was armed with tool or blade to steal
Your Celica and still the energy
Inside you welled and burst. It self-sustains.
You're weeping on your knees at Piggly Wiggly.
You're apt to feel a bond for many years.
Rest assured, I want to shoot an isotope--
Not you, a mere associate--to trigger that
Reaction in the lab. Now tell me, when,
Exactly, do you plan to ask for tenure?
III.
The Landgrant Professor Apeals For
Sabbatical, Citing the Real Reasons
You know
my research well. For many years,
With certain glee, you've seen experiment
Upon experiment accelerate
And bomb inside the lab. No loss to you.
The private sector sponsored all my tests
To shoot an isotope, and though I failed,
Methods of a failure are important.
My contribution lies in saving time.
A physicist eliminates until
He happens on the right hypotheses.
It's hypocritical, denying this
Appeal, maintaining I will flop again.
Admit it: Do you want me to succeed?
Imagine megabucks, publicity,
My name and mug (not yours) appearing on
The covers of your favorite magazines:
Newsweek, Nature, Science. "Man of the Year"
In Time. I’d be a guest on Larry King,
Answering your calls. Could you cope with that?
Of course
not. Time has come to tell the truth.
You want me on sabbatical because
You will not see me in the lab or hall.
I will cast no vote in your committees,
Compose no snarky letters to the dean
About the influence of chemists on
Curricula or purchase of equipment.
Think of it: Geologists on field days,
Sinking oil wells where species used to roam.
Biologists may mutate what remains--
The corn will taste like foam, the pork like string--
But I won't be around to sound the warning.
No, I'll be somewhere else--and that's the point.
Maybe on a slow boat bound for Malta,
Maybe here, Muskogee, Oklahoma,
Inside a rented cabin by the lake.
I'll slate my nervous breakdown. Best of all,
It won't occur at class. I'll spare you that
If you will let me keep my dignity.
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