Teaching In The Dark Poem by Sibghatullah Khan

Late in the evening, one hot summer day,
I was talking of two women knitting black wool,
in a dimly-lit global-South classroom
when suddenly power broke down.
We were lit with darkness that travelled
from the pages straight into our minds;
and our bodies put it on like black shawls.

Lucky! We did not have to stretch our fancies
and locate correlatives of darkness in the text:
I went glibly illuminating ‘the incomprehensible; '
and it was but easy to explicate ‘the unspeakable.'

We were caught unawares by a white angel
with a book as large as a ledger in his hands;
his starched collars, white cuffs and alpaca jacket
threw his luminous whiteness into relief.
It was like power restored
and sorry I could not talk any more.
It was almost time to leave
when a man with a mike in his mouth
was telling beautiful lies to a woman.

I was happy to see the whole truth:
Darkness had really helped, as it does.