But today, I’m not ready. Mr. Donaldson gives us a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, “To Any Reader.” I’m into it from the beginning. That’s never the problem. I read really well—English and Arabic—so my comprehension is like nothing you’ve seen. But this poem . . . the ending is what gets me: “It is but a child of air / That lingers in the garden there.” I don’t write a word. I just think of all the sadness that’s suddenly in my heart. How can one line, “a child of air,” do that to you? It’s not what the poet meant, for sure. But I’m taking it that way. Because that’s what is at stake here. I
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