When I should be working
on one of those afternoons
where the lights come on early
and rain spatters the windows
I take down an anthology
with a design of blue snowflakes
over the purple ground –
Longman English Series, Poetry
1900 to 1965
published (cased) in 1967.
T.S. Eliot looks desperate
in front of a BBC microphone
the size of a parking meter
and Thom Gunn’s as glamorous
as his own sad captains.
In the margins, my husband’s
young unreadable handwriting –
out of it springs a line,
a pulse of thought
he had years before we met.
In Notes, Lawrence is mildly taken to task
for the way his repetitions can degenerate,
though warmly praised for ‘Gentians’.
I remember the teacher’s voice
as we dug our heels into the flanks
of Sons and Lovers, on the home straight
or so we thought,
Does anyone know what he’s on about?
Helen? But in Longman’s Elysian
field the poems only answer
and the poets only ask.