High School of Music and Art - Recolte Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Tn the Freshman and His Lilies As a decrepit senior taices deiight To see the ireshmen doing deeds oi youth. i. too. graduating hy pure i'ortune's spite Taice ati my comfort ot thy worth and truth. For as i write this poem. hit hy hit, i thinic hacit oier my eight iong terms right here. And now entitied Hseniorf' i sit. instead oi homeworic. parod'ing Shakespeare. So then not quite decrepit nor despised And t can graduate and treeiy say. That i in thy ahundance am suiiiced That you wiii in my piace he here one day. Loot: what is hest and hest i wish in thee: This wish i have: thou ten times happy me. Heqnnls Those hours that with homework cruei did iramei The sweet iresh air was where each thought did dwett. Vviii piay the truant: do the very same! No woric is iair. which truiy does excei. For never resting. teacher drives us on To hideous regents. and confronts us there. Sap checiced with care. and confidence quite gone. Good tucic is iost. and hareness everywhere. Then it the init no ionger did remain A iiquid prisoner pent in waits oi giass. The regents hooic wouid quicidy see a stain. heaving no rememhrance what it Was. Now marics come hacicg from Aihany they are sent i,ittie to show. and zeroes to repent. GEORGE ZUKERMAN 38

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THE HIE ULD SIIHUUI. lt will be four years in Ianuary. It was a new year, a new month, a new decade-Ianuary, 1940. There was a war in Europe. It was a large fire, you might say. But we had our asbestos coats on. The fire would surely stop when it hit all that water out there-the good old Atlantic. Ianuary, four years ago, we were all excited about leaving elementary school. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to us, not be- cause of what we were leaving . . . we would soon bc High School Students! llere we are, Ianuary, four years later. Instead of our world wearing asbestos, it's wearing khaki, navy blues, overalls . . . working clothes. And wc'rc thinking about the big old school on 135 and Conventg the big old Gothic walls we hung our paintings on for the exhibits, so everyone could look at them, and stand, very seriously, and wonder what we could have been thinking ofg the walls for millions of bulletins about the fair, concerts, dances, and the basketball gameg the walls for campaign pos- ters and charts telling us how many war stamps we had to buy to hit the jackpot. VVe're thinking about the big ceilings, with all the pipes and cracks, so interesting while you wait to get bawled out in the officeg the big floors to argue on and make speeches ong the classroom floors. full of ink and ground-in chalkg the art room floors, clay, paint, turpsg the scientific smells on the fifth floor, the chopped egg salad ones from the lunch room, the paint smells and the musty violin casesg the floors with stained-in footprints of all the kids. We're thinking about the kids in first term, green-around-the-gills, trying to find the Lost and Found on the fifth floor and the music office on the thirdg second term, third, fourth-we were kids getting on in the world, influencing people-in- fiuencing freshmen, anyway. There were the dumb kids, the smart ones, the ones who got to school three minutes before the bell and thc rest, who got there three minutes after the bell. 39