A Poet’s Advice
Walter de la Mare
is in Melbourne - as
sports commentator.
Many dislike his voice,
‘posh’, long sentences,
but this is cricket
with the Poms on tour.
Half the team speak that way.
He glides toward me,
limp handshake. ‘Pleased
to meet…’ Yes, he will read
my manuscript, ‘but -
never expect fame
or money from poems!’
Do I look so young
and hopelessly hopeful?
He says he’ll post my packet
back, but never does.
The Test victory is theirs.
A Last Late Lecture
The professor who hired me
when I was thirty appears
forty-five years on, saying:
'Have you kept up?’ Well,
I'm lecturing right now -
come see, I say, and listen.
What bravado!
He sits at the back.
The half-filled room see
I’ve come without notes
or textbook. I bend over
one in the front row,
and what’s this? - stuff
I’ve never read, though
much mentioned for years
for being power-packed:
race, gender, class!
the tiresome threesome
I’ve skirted all this time
while others ‘work on them’.
Today I can’t just say:
here are some poems
I’ve enjoyed, let’s share.
My mouth is dry. I wake.
The Thesis Dream
My mid-life opus has dragged me
slowly into near-retirement
unfinished, untidy, what the heck.
Fed up with the long haul,
I parcel it off roughly along
the guidelines for submission,
settling back to wait.
Soon the assessors’ reports
come my way, restrained
but clearly scandalized.
No university accepts such
stuff. Am I downhearted?
Recurring dreams diverge.
There’s the turn to dismay,
or the blessed relief,
resurgence of self-belief.
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