Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Oxford ghosts

Let me just preface this by saying that I don't write poetry.  But apparently walking home from the Bodleian in the dark does weird things to my psyche.  I jotted this down sometime in November. 
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Are there hauntings in these buildings?—
ancient effigies of stone—

where empty rooms
forgotten stairways
nooks and crannies unexplored
or turned
with whitewashed paint
to modern studies
where boys and girls
read ancient worlds
in artificial lamplight,
the warmth of dying coffee
in ceramic mugs
mismatched,
and fight to enter in
to empire
as shadows are dispersed
by rising sunlight on the river, tamed

until tomorrow

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