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oxfordsprodigal
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Name: Oxfordsprodigal
Gender: Female
Interests: Truth and fighting for it, literature, writing, research, history, libraries, various cultures, lanugages (living and dead), grammar (specifically English), art (photography and painting), music, sports (tennis, yoga, soccer, hiking, running, ultimate frisbee, snowboarding).
Occupation: Other
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
10/4/2005
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| The afternoon air was light, but the street, crowded with skepticism, managed to suck every ounce of whimsical romanticism from my veins. I whispered something about simplicity and the marrow of life. He would have known what I meant. But he couldn’t hear me from the grave, and you wouldn’t see me from your ivory tower. I walked faster, hoping that maybe, just maybe, when I was eventually forced to turn around, your magnanimous structures of the late middle age’s academia would no longer be there. A row of gondolas by the water’s edge awaited the certainly soon-to-come crowd of passers-by, or tourists, as we called them. What a perfect place to set up shop. They come by the droves you see. They come to sit in your office at your feet for one or two stimulating moments and then traipse down the hill for a gondola ride. Do you cry when they leave? I think that I would. If only someone . . . no, this is the life you chose. I’m sure that’s what you think as you watch them go. The bridge’s age showed clearly through the cracked bricks and discolored capstones. A gondola passed beneath. This is England, I thought smugly, which I suppose is all one can do. Do you know that they’re charging now just to enter the grounds? I heard that two quid is the going rate, and you even have to stand in a queue. The courtyard is beautiful, but that’s not why they come. Do you know that they come to see your desk? They come to see your books. People will pay to see anything. I watch the way they look around enviously at those who live here. If only their longing eyes knew how much we envied their freedom. My card of membership gives me what they all think they want, but I have never even been in that courtyard, let alone the building. I looked through the wrought iron gates and . . . it was time to turn around. I paused, looking across the bridge and up at your window. It was all still there - the lovers in gondolas, the old stone buildings, your ivory haven. It was all still there, but something was different; I understood now. No one on that side of town knew me, so I walked, I walked and I cried – for you, for me, for this present evil age. Everything about this city is ominous - examination schools, Queen’s, University, All Souls, then around the Rad Cam, through the alley between Lincoln and Exeter where our homeless friend sits and sings, down Market Street, through the Centre, onto Shoe Lane where a man with a banjo and another with a brown bag bellow out an old British bar tune, and into St. Michael’s Hall, our brick, third-floor flat where the baneful darkness lingers yet the faint light remains. (written 3.4.06) | | |
| I’m not enough of what you need, and I’m too much of what could be the death of all of us. My words don’t meld and float like cracked leaves on an icy, cold river. They fall hard to the ground like rocks crumbling off a cliff, reminding us of gravity but not inspiring us to greatness. You sing a melody that I once knew, but it rests painfully on ears that appear, more often than not, to be unable to hear. Nonetheless, I’m not the only one who can’t seem hum to this song quite like it was written. Hopkins, Eliot, Auden, and Lewis all displayed the same melodious perpetuity of struggle. Perhaps I’ll wear white, flannel trousers and let the awkwardness of this age present itself unabashedly. Thomas Stearns and I would have been brilliant friends – he in his tweed, three-piece suit and horn-rimmed glasses, and I with my white, bare, braceleted arms. We would have been quite the pair. Would he digress do you think? I don’t know. Those days are gone, but were it not for his laments, I wouldn’t know that I’m not alone. But while Eliot reminds me that I was meant for a different place, and Auden sings the songs of pain and compassion, and Lewis profoundly asks the questions that I am afraid to think, it is Hopkins who raises his voice best above the loud clamor of the streetcars and pedestrians this night. He brings to my mind the melody that, only moments ago, seemed inaudible under the refuse of my heart. "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," and "He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him" (from God's Grandeur and Pied Beauty). | | |
| "Ahoy," said the grandfather,like the clock on the wall,this ship, it sails on and on,rough and rolling,fighting with every beatof his heart -the hearth and mantlethat no ship owns -and a seagull squawksand the time laps on and onwith red skies warningand starboards mourningto the rhythm of his years,steering toward a beaconthat most don’t seeand fewer reach. "Beware, Beware,"echo the gasps fromthe deadly sea’s belly,as morning breaksand joy forsakesthis grief-besotted tragedy. Her lullaby allays the woebelow the deckin the hold where he holds her tightlyas the tightly-pulled ropescrack against the sailand snap, snapping himto cognizance. For Tennyson’s fading ladylay in a boat of silkand lavender after all.And Poe’s woeful Annabeltormented him with the spellof a lover’s last hurrah. "Je suis la fille; je suis ici,"the damsel on the catwalksings her song."Je suis ton coeur; je suis ton amour,"says the girl of his dreamsas he dies in the storm. (written 11.12.05) | | |
| What I Saw From the Bastion She wept tearless that her heart was lostin the far away frost of San Francisco.Cliche and dark as it was,the grief of the day incited a brief and loose sympathy,for my conscience was held by a mystical ream of foreboding dreams that faded and returnedwith the breaks of the provinces,quite like hers. She told me that the lions stole her lifeas a dead man’s strife tore her bastille.Professors gave her regimentsand a creed that cures the deathbut never seemed to erasethe falling fortifications made fromscraps of origami and cracked glass she loved,yet penitence would have been a better haventhan her trap of trepidation. I left my affections floating in an oceanof deep blue and gray,like the water of Maine,too cold to address but too deep to refrain.Where breath is capturedand anger squelched by lapping and laughingof children’s hearts raptured,of hawks eyes from the skies,of lupines rising and falling and moving gently,submitting to the breezeof the early summer’s morning,beckoning the lost to enter,promising rest but reckoning tears–for such paradises only exist in the recessesof taut minds and longing sighs,in the books of those with inklings of the tides.So from this shore fades the world across the waters,the jade-colored country, to which I lookand wonder how dreams can seem so real,when the light of day faltersand the flickering of life on the other sideglimmers in the otherwise black of night.So slightly the light moves through the airthat I don’t know what it means, or how it fares,or where it goes,as it dances to and fro,or for whom it moves,yes, for whom it moves. I told no one that I lost my heartin the far away dark of this sad night,reading Eliot and writing nonsense,for the bleeding of the day and the words yet unspokendid silence my brandish,for my heart was held by a whimsicalream of foreboding dreams that faded and returnedwith the divisions of the seas,quite unlike hers. Please, dear night, might I haveback my heart?I whisper the trite phrase I don’t meanagainst the roaringwaves and thundering gravesof another war’s bountythat will come and goon the shore of despondenceand leave me weaker than beforebut with life and a conscience,bound by memories. (written 9-14-05) | | |
| Solitude on Magnolia Terrace Darkness rested in the air all around the inside. The shudder-like doors let in a few small streams of light. I wondered if they would give me away. Could he see me through the holes that reached out into the world? Would he know to find me there? I hoped not. The space inside was small, but I soon decided that, if necessary, I could manage there for quite some time. I fit perfectly between the rounded shelves that covered the walls. The mass of clothing adorning those white-washed shelves was warm against my back, and I gasped for a moment, feeling slightly claustrophobic. I wanted to empty one of the top shelves, climb up and pull the clothes over and around me; then I would really be hidden. But I had grown too big for such things, so I stood there in silence, trying to admire the way the slits of light fell on my legs and arms. I had chosen this place carefully. It was, by far, the best fit for me. Every other option I found to be too small, too dangerous, or too obvious. From this vantage-point not only was I closed in, but no one could sneak up on me. My back to the wall and my face to the door, I felt fairly well prepared for any intrusion to my personal haven. Alert and aware, I waited, but he never came. I heard footsteps. I heard voices. Didn’t they know I was ready for them? No one could scare me this time. But they never came. Would they leave me there alone forever? Did they think I really enjoyed my solitude as much as I pretended to? But still they never came. I had picked the perfect spot. Sometimes I hated hide and seek. (written 3.21.03) | | |
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