A kid in cowboy boots 
walks into an Indian literature class.  
If it isn’t a joke, it’s a caution—  
the wholesome alien, the sex and sati.  

You know the kind of boy 
I mean: he has chores, he’d sign  
a vow written in pencil,   
and, though you never ask   

and he never volunteers to tell,  
you know which flannel shirt  
he favors; it’s the powder blue. A boy  
from the beatitudes—pure in heart,   

a blinker, a second bass, a meek corder 
of hardwoods—he’ll read every sad book  
on your list.   
                         Still, to the last day   
you wait for him to object,  

to praise the trains, to complain: 
all these false gods and strange names.  
Instead he says he closed  
the final novel around its dead,   

around its gelded and chastened, 
its mourners and poor and poor 
in spirit, and cried. I didn’t expect   
to love them, he says. And then is gone,   

this earnest boy, his home haircut, 
his trophy buckle. In the end 
you’re kin: you also were expecting 
something less than love.