Yum. I like this. Very bitter.
Frank
> The rival
>
> This was his room and now it's mine,
> its oak desk solid as the made career,
> the painting of the estuary by a local artist
> still clear as the view from the wide bay
> window. I knew him as a student,
> the box of poems beneath his bed,
> how he read Keats in the library
> when he should've been in the lab instead.
>
> It was the year with the prof
> that got him this room, when she left
> after her affair, how primed he was
> to hold the empire, and to shine.
> These are the shelves that held
> his papers, eighty by the end
> - he was the editor of the college mag-
> the books for undergrads he wrote
> on Cell Biology. and did he plan it
> when he sat on the panel?
>
> At any rate, funding was diverted
> to his department, away from mine,
> and people lost their jobs. He must have washed
> his hands in this basin as if
> they'd never be clean. He looked
> for the best, or so he said.
> He poached more like. He sucked
> six post-grads from my boss's lab.
> Worked hard? He delegated-
> meant dumped on others
> - the credit to himself.
>
> This is the square of sky
> where he schemed, watched
> clouds experiment with form
> as lives were shaped. An irony
> they said - they meant perversely sad-
> he died of the leukaemia he studied.
> But I know better. The paper weight
> I got from "Budapest" came from Chernobyl.
>
>
> He became his books, mutated cells,
> as blackened as his own dark heart.
> The view I'll have. The stone must go.
> I declined his obituary, at first,
> but pressure told - I knew him best -
> put pen on page today and start to write.
> The rest soon comes - "He did the work of ten.
> bright beacon...an inspiration for the young."
>
> __________________________
>
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