This poem was inspired by a dream I had in which I was at some kind of reunion at which my old headmaster, Joseph Safkin (1909-1985) was the guest of honour. The poem, like most dream-inspired writing is probably more about me than the eponymous Mr Safkin.
Many thanks to Claire Goldie for the main photograph and Barry Jacques for the one of Mr Safkin.
DANCING WITH MR SAFKIN
I had a dream, but not like MLK’s,
Poor man, who was shot when I was at school.
In the dream I was back at my alma mater
A technical school…red brick conformity;
Sadly, along with my childhood, now long gone.
Our headmaster was one Joseph Safkin,
His name out of place (like that of a Cold War spy)
In amongst the Ackroyds, Nutters and Tattersalls,
Those fine solid-sounding Lancashire names,
Hand carved out of the Pennine millstone grit.
Even at our old school, he was ‘old school’.
The swinging sixties tried their best to get in
But it would only have been over his dead body.
His use of the word ‘Cinema’ with a hard ‘C’,
When speech day at The Grand came around
Was an anachronism that came from…where?
His time at the L.S.E.? A rendezvous in Vienna?
He would breeze about the quadrangles,
Never leaving the school’s original buildings.
His home remained in the recalled academia
Not the harsh modern surfaces of a technical school.
‘Joe Crow!’ (back then, who would have dared?)
As his black cloak billowed out behind him,
Chugging like a tiny Black Five steam train;
A Hornby OO puffing out clouds of St Bruno
Into the rarefied air of his academic ideals.
His march of stasis through the clearing kids;
Ignoring all but those likely offenders
That sullied his aesthetic standards.
The long-haired, sideburned, and moustachioed;
The short-skirted, thigh-booted and ear-ringed,
Who were pulled up and steadfastly redressed.
Like most kids I kept out of his way.
Only ever spoke to him the once…
Not much of a conversation really…
One way…the cane was mentioned in passing
And that swish was as close as it ever got.
Summoned to his office, after my own mother
Grassed me up for playing truant.
I must have been a disappointment to him;
An erstwhile Lancastrian Billy Casper
Standing there in my worn blazer.
The scruffy urchin, in a grey shirt.
(Never had a white shirt in five years.
Mum said I would just get them dirty
And a grey one would last the week out).
But in the dream, I am wearing a white shirt.
The boys, now grown (no girls! Dreams, eh?)
Are uniform in black sweater and trousers.
An homage perhaps to our guest of honour.
And then he arrives to ecstatic applause,
Smiling at the adulation, arms raised
In a Polynesian multi-coloured overshirt
(More colours than a Jackson Pollock!)
With smart beige chinos and trainers beneath.
He high-fives everyone on the front row,
And then asks for a volunteer.
He wants someone to give him a hug.
I step forward…parting the crowd,
The kid ever careful to stay in the shadows…
Never, ever called up to the school stage,
Steps up on his own terms as a man.
We embrace and at my proposal that we dance,
He grins with delight and takes the lead
As the pair of us waltz around the room.
© gray lightfoot
gray lightfoot 
Hi Gray,
What an absolutely accurate and beautiful description of Joe Safkin. Thanks for bringing back some great memories.
As I was often up to no good, I lived in fear of being called to attend his dark brown office for some unspeakable punishment through much of the Beatle years. As Joe had a way of intimidating his students there was no way on earth that we would treat him with anything less than the utmost respect. The only exception to this was when, in the morning assembly, Joe ordered the girls to ‘drop’their skirts’ as they were getting too short as was the 60’s fashion. The place erupted and Joe made a swift exit.
I used to wear walking boots to school due to the mud on my route. Joe would constantly pull me up about my footwear which he referred to as shi boots. Very strange.
During the 6th form, Joe gave a group of us a short series of English Literature lessons, a welcome break from headache inducing Maths, Phys, Chem. He probably just wanted to do a bit of hands-on teaching rather than the usual admin work. They were memorable lessons in which he treated us as adults. The chosen book was Waiting for Godot which might have been out of his academic comfort zone. But maybe not. I came away with the impression that beneath that veneer, Joe was very open-minded.
I’m happy to have found your site.
Hi Graham, Thanks for the kind remarks, your account of your experiences of Mr Safkin are equally evocative of our schooldays…and your reference to ‘shi’ boots reminded me of another of his anachronisms. He would often refer to school ski-ing holidays as ‘shi-ing’ trips.
I was interested of your memory of him teaching ‘Waiting for Godot’ which might be out of his comfort zone. I suppose he would have chosen to do it, so like you say, maybe not.
Before writing the poem, which was a recounting of a dream I had, I traced his life through the two censuses he was on 1911 and 1939. His heritage is unclear from a brief study, his name suggested a Jewish connection, but there was no evidence of this. He was married quite young. After the war he moved from London (studied at LSE) to a post Huddersfield as I recall before becoming the first head of NSTS. I suspect that he might have preferred to be a grammar school head, but that is just my opinion. His choice of Waiting for Godot suggests there was more to the man than we kids thought.
Lovely chatting with you
All the best
Gray