as it lifted from Heathrow ... ( Would I come there again?)
climbed over M4, industrial estates and fields of rape below,
banked so I saw the spire of Oxford, where I heard urbane
Mozart played by the Warden ofWadham in Jacobean chapel gloom
(Sir Isaiah Berlin had inflated his rubber ring) and the glow
of evening lit the glory of the glass and tune.
Astounding in the streets outside, English beggars sit,
so young and pale, reasonably reciting woe
and asking
only
for 'a little change.'
Some hopes!
That's it.
Weare into cloud and climbing, eleven hours to go.
Soon drinks and dinner in the sun, Tokyo . . . then Australia,
Siberia's page below us blank as Pendle's under snow.
Don Bogen
Bouquinistes
Old prints and books, old medals, buttons, sepia postcards -
I admired the compact abundance,
the invisible careful choices that made it all seem rich,
the ingenious green wooden stands themselves
set apart yet open to the street, the trees and the river.
Living in two worlds, I was drawn to the freedom of this browsing,
its small bright discoveries within the dailiness of the setting.
There are books I wanted to enter just for the sense
of being lost in them yet still aware of a breeze in the chestnut,
my thoughts of you, the river, its currents, islands, where the bridges are.
