i.m. Sarah Maguire<\/em><\/p>\n Sarah half a lifetime ago I met you <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kenneth Koch for God\u2019s sake, Kenneth Koch <\/p>\n <\/p>\n St Hilda\u2019s Priory<\/em><\/p>\n Six no seven tractors, and two shire horses A polytunnel, a nuns\u2019 cats\u2019 cemetery, Caedmon\u2019s there if you think that way *<\/p>\n St Mary\u2019s Churchyard *<\/p>\n Sonnet 73<\/em><\/p>\n I can sit on a bench by this when the lights came on We bowed our heads on this bench with my brother still there too.\u00a0 I say it under <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Poetry Society i.m. Sarah Maguire Sarah half a lifetime ago I met you in a meeting at the top of Betterton Street. I remember your tank-commander\u2019s watch exactly an hour wrong.\u00a0 You were one year older and half a lifetime further on.\u00a0 I think we made each other frivolous, though you were serious in your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[408,405],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nin a meeting at the top of Betterton Street.
\nI remember your tank-commander\u2019s watch
\nexactly an hour wrong.\u00a0 You were one year older
\nand half a lifetime further on.\u00a0 I think
\nwe made each other frivolous, though you
\nwere serious in your art, just as I imagine
\nin how you lived.\u00a0 So many spoke
\nbecause of you.\u00a0 Except for poems I only knew
\nyou were a gardener.\u00a0 Your project
\nwas nurturing also, a public space, your words
\nthere in the soil, so many cuttings and changings.
\nA sort of translation.\u00a0 You said translation
\nwas the opposite of war.\u00a0 We said our paths
\nmust cross in this small world, but I met you again
\nonly in poems, your own, unmistakable, and
\nthose Latin names gathered in Flora Poetica<\/em>,
\nthe real meaning of anthology. <\/em>Opening it today
\nis to step into bright shade, so many perfumes
\nand the promise where no day was, though
\nin that society there was a roof to sit out on
\nin the sun to talk and drink and read
\nin the middle of London, in the middle
\nof all those words and reputations \u2013 your own
\nnot least now your work outlives you
\nall that unbelievable short time ago.<\/p>\nKenneth Koch<\/h2>\n
\nreading to twenty people in a room above a pub.
\nAnd not even poems, short plays. Crazy. Next day
\nhe wheeled a suitcase into Huddersfield
\nbuffet, three tennis racquets strapped to it
\nacross the Atlantic, to meet for breakfast
\non his way to York York.\u00a0 He was a person
\nnot a book or memorial.\u00a0 He ate
\na sandwich called a butty and drank tea
\nnot coffee when in Rome, which he knew,
\nincidentally, like the back of his head.
\nIt was before cameraphones. Behind that wall
\nwith its artificial art a train
\nsweated and shivered.\u00a0 Behind that a second train
\nsaid something or other about fame,
\nwhich can only get up from the page
\nwhen the reader is content with
\nor without it.\u00a0 Of course he was a man,
\nbut he spoke like a thoughtless boy. They all did,
\nand that was their greatness, not least the
\nreflection of a convex age, the great
\nthat\u2019s to say among the great, and still
\nat the platform; another saw a river
\nof fish in the stream, much favoured, and the last
\nwas the first to live only afterwards \u2013 on a beach \u2013
\nwho brought a brimming anecdote to his lips.
\nRemember?\u00a0 The day passed.\u00a0 A train
\nis just a vehicle. And suddenly it\u2019s evening.<\/p>\nWhitby<\/h2>\n
\nthat trudge over, mistaking me.<\/p>\n
\nand far on the hill above the Esk
\nthe Abbey, with the famous steps
\nup to St Mary\u2019s, counting all the way.<\/p>\n
\nmucking out in a snowbound winter
\nand dreaming the first poem.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>
\n<\/em>Another time a nice American
\nasked which was Dracula\u2019s grave.
\nI said I didn\u2019t know but told my friends
\nI showed him a sepulchre, washed
\nblank among the leaning stones.
\nAnd when all\u2019s said no less real
\nthan the Venerable Bede
\nor for that matter these bare trees,
\nruined choirs of a seminar
\nwhere late the sweet birds sang,
\nin one ear and out the other.<\/p>\n
\nstained glass window
\nas the boy I was one afternoon<\/p>\n
\nin a tutor\u2019s room in the Poly.
\nI loved that place.
\nThat was me, whose brother
\nnever learned to read.<\/p>\n
\nin the long black window
\nto our books.\u00a0 And today that time
\n<\/em>of year thou may\u2019st in me behold<\/em><\/p>\n
\nin my head whom I never
\ntaught to read dead a dozen years,
\nand the poem I still know<\/p>\n
\nmy breath, who knows why.<\/p>\n