Dead languages

She is queen of the whiteboards,
The straightened tables,
The sow's ear books.
Knower of knowledge,
She cries upon being told
That she studies a dead language.

The queen of Latin,
She conjugated some verbs
And all on a summer's day,
The room panting with
Compressed heat, sitting heavy
On the tongues of limp collared pupils.

Her jacket is ridged in the back
From sitting against the radiator,
Cold metal through chipped paint.
A sigh as the coffee slips,
Slops into her in-tray, and papers
Labelled To Be Marked
in her singular writing
Become soaked in dead language.