This dry summer and the Earth is cracked

Opening rifts around the more recent

Graves where my mother and sister are buried

So riven and shrunken the soil

Their headstone rocks to my weight and

There is nothing to depend upon

Yet still I’ll tarry

Sketch the scene

Walk the churchyard

Wonder at the Cypresses

Open the Great King James

On Daniel

Envied for honour 

Sunk in the anchoress ocean

Where the lions

Could but swim

Out here this hot summers day

I am flailing in the light

Petalled in the Sun

My portion of life

Lesser than theirs

Yet vivid lives

When at Cambridge

When at Cambridge I was bound by urgent

torments of prejudice.  Not just the fears

of status jealously desired but

immeasurable views, a paralax

of shadows, a chiaro-scuro of

moorish taste. He fat, she common, he wrong,

she right. Always a frame like a butcher

evaluating, scouring the block. 

The memoried practiced eye weighing his

tropes of old, or hers, now them or other.

Much like an abattoir or a hangman’s

skills at suffering, perhaps easing death.

Now, time apparent has wrent the forms once 

learned. Years like a lathe reduced and shaped

the stump, the lumpen gnarled yet curious

array.  Smoothed in places, smothered elsewhere.