ON HEARING THE MCAS SCORES
FOR MY SCHOOL


Like the hands of a good five-card monte

           dealer on 14th St.,

 numbers can move faster

                     than the minds that created them,

trumping poetry, trumping visions,

                   trumping the eye,

promising precision, whole rulers of truth,

                            and measurements that will not lie,

     and creating a world in their own

slender image,

               where

      soon


               what is valued is only what can be measured,


and servants become masters,

       plotting the grids

of our lives.


December 9,1998


All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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