In the dark before the dawn I’m up to run The margins of Merton Playing Field,
Omicrons and epsilons of the iron age In my mouth, expecting early sun
At every turn on the wet grass past the weald That conceals the Cherwell, the air a page
Of ancient lines at the end of Trinity In the emptying early summer of Oxford,
Anxious to learn Herodotus and Solon, Sonorant clusters, a seeming infinity
Of declensions, of character and word, Receding dreams of Homer and Xenephon.
. . .
Still damp from the showers, I arrive early At the big blond table demarcated
With blocks of morning light, thinking of hot Aegean rocks splashed by a restive sea,
Soon joined by others, like me, intimidated, And then our instructor appears, not
What I expect, a young and cheery Jesuit brother, half bald. He’s hardly begun
To chalk the letters when he gazes out The windows a while, as if he’s grown weary,
Before turning back to ask if anyone Might still remember anything about
The day the cranes at the docks on the Thames Lowered in mourning for Churchill’s funeral barge
As it steamed from London Bridge and the crowd Stood and saluted, as slippery diadems
Of sunlight seal the views of old stone, grow large On glass sliding slowly with glaciers of cloud.
. . .
The Greek I had back then is gone. The shapes ……………..Mean nothing now.
The Cyclops’ boulder’s rolled aside. The grapes ……………..Are withered too.
My copy of the Odyssey is packed ……………..With sand that snuck
Aboard at starlit Naxos decades back. ……………..It sparkles in
The gutters that come unglued, the spine now cracked. ……………..I’m drawn again
To see in blinding rolls of surf the Black- ……………..Benched ships of war.
The rainbow-shattered shells shine sharp as stars ……………..Along the tide-
Lines inching up like sails stretched out on spars ……………..To fill, then fall.