Oxford

dragging bags, spending money,

leaning over luggage,

suddenly saying, “Without you, God,

I can’t continue.” Who was that?

And then I lift it and walk

to find one book.

Up Iffley Turn to the Hawkwell and Tree Inns

and down over a lock

into an extended filthy river

through the Thames Valley

and over a meadow into town:

two fats,

one fishing and one man on a bike

swerving through Cotswold cow pads.

I ask:

“Do you know the fastest way

to City Centre?”

No, yes, no!

Circle Magdalen College, and the mall, the High,

Broad Street, po and Headington Hill,

Brookside and Christ Church,

cross big pavement stones and cobbles

to Holywell

and down North Parade, Maison Blanc, Browns,

the Phoenix Cinema on Walton Street

where you can bring your wine into the film.

Asbestos,

white dust, condiments, Pret Manger,

T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, smelly markets, buskers

on a harp

and a xylophone, buses and bicycles.

Red-faced riotously quiet British. . . .

Earl green carpets and rotten wood frames,

lavender, and buttery daisies,

flagelot beans, bar food, the stink of perfumes

over toilets, Blackwell has none,

St. Philips does, what are you looking for:

Thomas Merton.

(There are so many mental ways

and Abbot Patrick in his cassock stands high above

and smiles and says You see? It’s all right

the church is in ruins.)

The devil runs the world was Adam’s discovery

and now it is time to pray

before Blake’s engravings of the double bind.

“Do you carry The Seven Storey Mountain?”

No.

Everything you see is finished.

Even the ground underfoot and ahead.  

The stars and the dancing planets—over.

A grand finale unfolds across the lens.

There is no present.  

The book is out of print.