I read Sunday with Elaine Feinstein at Exeter College, Oxford, as part of the Life Lines 2: Poets for Oxfam launch readings to a good-sized audience of appreciative and thoughtful students. During the Q & A questions regarding translation, evil and truth in poetry, and other matters, arose. One audience member rather kindly compared the sounds in my poems to Heaney and Plath. We then attended Choral Evensong (there was also Holy Baptism of two young people), followed by dinner at High Table, as a guest of the Rector. It was a very fine day, altogether, made better by the extraordinary sunlight.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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