Our Professor Berrington

by Myles Weber (February 2024)

Our Professor Berrington proclaims an end
to certitude except his own.  He, like others,
flattens verity, for he’ll extend
a firm denial to facts.  He smothers
–
in the crib hard sciences, as he knows too much
that isn’t so.  Simultaneous
turgid pronouncements from a book—his crutch—
grease his smooth escape.  Who can free us
–
from slippery attempts to block, dispose
of, and dread our late advances?  Culture regresses
to cave-man schemes when primitives impose
fallacious postulations.  No one possesses
–
the fortitude we need to salvage clarity.
In rudimentary soil doubt is planted.
As his students we lack temerity:
To Professor Berrington, God has grantedas granted
–
an imitation intellect of a kind,
buried in academic detritus.
On some points, we bear the truth in mind.
On some, our hesitancy circles back to bite us.

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Myles Weber is the author of Consuming Silences: How We Read Authors Who Don’t Publish (University of Georgia Press).  His work has appeared in the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, the Sewanee Review, and the Kenyon Review.

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