Poetry for Morrill Hall

Morrill Hall

By Michael Carey

For Iowa State University

It is 1889 and you are

coming down these steps

your starched collar

sweaty and stiff,

your dress billowing

in the spring breeze

exposing for a brief

Victorian moment

the flesh inside your

stockinged ankles.

Clop, clop, clop.

The horses on the drive,

the feet on the

winding stair behind

carry voices numb

with song. What does

it smell like this morning?

Perfume perhaps, powder,

aftershave, the sticky

drift from the linden

that is clinging to

the rounded windows.

Soon, the book

under your arm

will speak to you.

What difference

does it make

if you are coming

from choir

or the library

or the museum?

Isn't poetry

a form of prayer,

something to

hold and treasure

even after so many years

when the red brick

and the gray mortar

are melting and

green ivy climbs

over the walls

and the floors

inside, over the doors

over the brown drifts

of bee carcasses

listening for the

clop, clop, clop

of returning steps

for a post and call

for you to enter

these doors again

and to leave them again

and again and again

holding on to whatever

dark bit of knowledge

that will change you,

lead you out

into the world

toward the future

that is waiting.

Morrill Hall II

By Michael Carey

For Iowa State University

I

Red bricks

bent into a circle

topped by a witches cap,

or a monks cowl or the

hood of a wizard.

A roof broken

again and again

by a spire and cupola

and a chimney and gables.

In picture after picture,

it stands beside those

who have studied here

lived here, taught here,

learned and grown --

a tangible ghost

a companion,

waiting for generations

to remember,

to once again

be home.

II

In 1893 on the

second floor

there was

a museum

full of large

stuffed animals.

Stuffed full

of what

I could not say,

but when

I was a child

visiting Daddy

I ran up the stairs

and a giraffe

talked to me.

Really, it talked.

I smiled all day

but I told no one.

III

I can't fathom

how we studied

under the bellowing

of stenciled pipes

and the thump, thump

of the student pumpers:

chapel, choir, concerts,

plays, practices and recitals

lead and air singing

always singing

above our bent heads,

while the books

in our young hands,

tried to speak to us

seriously and silently.

IV

We didn't have

many books

compared to what

you have today,

and certainly

no computers.

Our card catalogue

looked more like

a hutch or bureau

or dinning room buffet

but we had space

and a huge Persian rug

and many poles

to peg

our wandering

thoughts on.

V

What better place

for a man named Christian

to house his

3-dimensional antiphony,

all his tenderness and concern,

the earthly touch

of his heavenly love,

than a former

house of prayer.

VI

Say there's a

scientist so brilliant

he can't speak

and be understood.

Say there's an artist

who understands

everything with her hands.

Say they find each other

and love each other.

I mean their thoughts

and their feelings.

Say something is born

from this meeting,

that you can see

and smell and taste

and touch or hear

and students gather

because they've noticed

suddenly

they are different,

the world

is different, or at least

their experience of it,

their concept of it.

That would

be excellence,

I say.

That would be

teaching.

VII

Textiles --

it's knowledge

you can wear,

a past you can feel.

It's a plant in a lab,

a synthetic fiber,

a new color or material

with no name --

only possibilities

VIII

In 1905 the

southeast corner

of the basement

was made into

a barbershop

to rid it

of the smell

of dead fish

and large

decaying animals

and the damp,

sweaty clothes

of the gymnasium.

Only afterwards

did a quartet of

clean-shaven students

think to sing

in it.                                        

IX

The last occupant

of the second story

was Extension.

The earliest record

of their move in

was 1930,

and despite cold weather

and hot weather

and secretaries

haunted by bats and

a wayward camel,

and millions of bees

flying through

the labyrinth of

brick walls to sting them,

it took over 66 years

to get them out

X

Negatives, proofs

and reversed, inked plates

still decorate

the walls that no one

looks at anymore,

lay-outs and displays

are still in-progress

though no one

knows who or what

the words and images refer

to anymore. And he

or she still moving

her thoughts around

is, most likely,

a thought now herself

an image only,

in someone's heart

or the air.

XI

Who would stoop to restore,

would stoop to build.

And those who build

know that order survives.

There is joy in their eyes,

no matter what falls,

there is vision, the same

that saved this world,

that gave the world

to us.

XII

Morrill Hall.

One looks up

when one passes.

One looks up,

because that's

what one does

when one is taken

by a dream.