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)

Currently Listening December, Piano Solos: 20th Anniversary Edition By George Winston see related