to Edgar Bowers, at 70
‘Pure mathematics!’ That’s what you exclaimed
Across the polite applause to me, enthused
By a forgotten opus hardly famed
In its own time or place. Not being used
To seeing you moved and vulnerable then brought
Another harmony into my head,
The divisions of your verse, its metres taut,
Drawn from the order trusted to the dead.
A love of the abstract … yet you evoke,
Through poignant scenes of Europe sketched in youth,
An order that’s the sharper for the smoke;
And, later on, make your locality –
The golden coastline where civility
Encounters nature – witness to the truth.
1994