Life at Oxford

A poem of thanksgiving

Scullers in the dawn mist on the Isis alongside Christ Church meadow.

To the Founder

So they said you hadn't heard from me
in a while, fair enough
I've been meaning to write

But you set much in motion
changed up just about everything
that mattered, and partly nothing

(that mattered too, I take it you saw
something in my compass you liked)
I guess you have that effect on people

Give them a life of the mind
and they cash it out in hectic service
Give them a gilded river place

and they tilt through it, box up
their fat theses, all the Booker Prize winners
and the wistful traffic cone

and fan out again worldly wide
Like prayer, I could tell you what
I came away with, though not accounting

for the heat or light of each gift
lighting on me like an impossible wingèd thing
from science (the romantic years)

Big colon here then, let the late gates
of memory groan a bit:

Start with the idea of Port Meadow
Arcadia's Arcadia, Archimedean point
of the spire city, the original cow time

Or Jericho of an evening gothic
unmoved by fairy lights across its wet dark
black stained with brick moss

Or say Mesopotamia in flood
the iron lamp stooping beyond the waters
and the fox silvered by moon

Or Isis at the last, southern most
where bodies akimbo in their shells
curl again and again for the towpath

Think astral events over dark quads
pain of others heard in arches
comforts taken in common rooms

Think infernal night carnivals by kebab van
a wobbly-cobbled dawn, and tearful
cold piss-rain

Closing time in every library, proud
a hasty run-through in every chapel, mild
long talks earnest beyond reckoning

Calls to flight in the small indigo hours
Heathrow for home, Stansted for the rest
easy transport, lesser gravity

Wine bars of Eire and Bohemia, all that's alpine
whitewashed Aegean and Adriatic days
desert buses rattling hard

Needless to say, I want to thank you
for the cast and crew

The smocked worker bees in college
out to out-Dickens Dickens
just curious enough about the occupants
unbored by generations

Gawky, punky, bluff British youth
loveable and lonely in their crowds
and the global research graduariat
travelling intently in packs of one

The American senators in waiting
the blaze of wits and charlatans
all the beautiful people
painted onto pre-dinner drinks

Someone to cup steady tea with
and never say hold the milk, I hate it
my love from a land down under
(warm thanks to your handlers there)

I could go on
I think that's the point

So that just leaves the ethical business
I wasn't going to go there
but it does come up, the giving back
and I haven't done the trigonometry

Guess I try for carbon neutral
Never ate shrimps on the Blue Train
but haven't torched Milner or Beit in effigy either

Atoning for your scarlet farmer tan
would be easy if I didn't feel so
keenly mistook to begin with

(Your newer titans, made gorgeous
by marathon, lab hours, refugee velocity
achieve this too with their deadly aim)

You uprooted, shook and set me down again
some considerable time later
with all the morality of a storm cell

so while I won't claim to be equal
to the cost of your blunt deposits, indexed
to all the human tides involved

I will show up for the game humble
curiosity driven
ready to win one for compassion today

For this durable thought, and every chance
to act on it, run with better angels
I raise a glass again

To the Founder
Long may you