The name had been lodged in memory with no place attached
A somewhere you might have had to go
if
and when
you needed to know or prove yourself to another
Suddenly there it is and the Courtauld Institute inside it
the vast courtyard framed
All this was mine!
In my childhood as a London boy
It was all a given
names all known
places and palaces never visited
Lincolns Inn Fields
There it is! Next to Covent Garden
and I never knew
Yet it was all mine
and even if I always knew
the barriers of wealth
I believed that culture
stood above this
and was itself a key to something greater
This the curse of religiosity!
That there is an above
a saviour
a state of being aside wealth and pride
The Pride of the Table Turner!
but no
lack of curiosity
and a cleaving tight to tight to beauty
and it’s access through
a love
that plain work might destroy.
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