Final Exam

Thirty-seven heads bend over paper
while thirty-seven hands scrawl hectic text.
The sprawl of pages on the tables covers
the spreading fear of being incorrect.

One by one, the students raise their eyes
to see which cracking beam might have the answers,
or squint out through the windows for the hints
the courtyard trees have hidden in their branches.

The sparrows speak of sparrow things; the water
sounding in the fountain cannot say
what's wrong or right. But still the students look
everywhere for help but at their papers.

If they see me following their gazes,
they turn back, with small, embarrassed smiles,
to the tables' scratched and varnished grain,
as if knowledge might be in such lines.

But perhaps the answers can be had
from all this dead and living wood, the beams
and furniture that listen to the lectures,
the growing trees that drink the light with leaves.

Outside, the breeze abates; the trees grow still.
A chaffinch chants a final song, a swift
screes off, and now there's no sound but the fountain
to tell the students how much time is left.