‘However sparred or fierce
the furzy elements…’ – the steel guitars
he never learnt to recognise,
Merle Haggard’s voice, a bed of tinny
feedback – ‘let them be but few,
and spaciously dispersed,
and excellence appears.’
His taxi to the airport
ups the volume on a gospel show.
A transplant, hating country music,
his new campus, how the students
see him as a pinko Brit
and not the brawling Tory of PN Review,
he takes a backward look at Music City –
neon bars, the empty megachurch. It’s sparse as hell.