Oxford Commination

Rising from the pale valley, the rivers unseen from here,

Shwangun Range is all apple light and dappled

definition, with sky clear between final spring

and summer. Round that bend (where five townies in

a dirty

coon-tailed Ford always seem to be doing eighty)

lies Lake Minnewaska-pretty and phoney as Switzerland-

one has to be both old and rich to hire a glimpse of it.

I look down now, over past ugly Kerhonkson

sunken into rolling depth by height and green distance

and say to you: this is the last poem of mine, curse

or tribute, you will walk through. This is my world

not yours.

Get out of my hair and my system, out of my head.

It was never your poems, bad or brilliant, that obsessed me

but your world, the childhood I lived through without

knowing it

and, grown and knowing it through you, could not grow

out of.

You were the shadow my father laughed at that

frightened me,

the Faith and Freud to which my mother lit her lean

candles.

My Oxford was not your Oxford, but you turned up,

flapping incredible mukluks down the Corn and

St. Aldates,

your famous hair in famous disarray, your belt

hanging loose like a lariat. Owning a mutual religion

we shared a mass in Christ Church, and you said your

Sanctus

with belief only the gross or cruel could impugn.

I poured your wine, a face among literary faces,

and you talked about nothing of interest or importance,

though still a past I was too shy to come to terms with.

But it was my Oxford not yours. I dined that last

term with names and opinions and drank sparkling hock

in Wadham and suffered a delicious season of Roman fever

at St. Mary Mag's and wrote tough elegant bitchy poems.

The days turned occasionally towards this or that war

but there was no tension between style and belief,

no silly high resolutions about freedom,-

only sensible window-glass sent to gunned Budapest.

What were you doing in my Oxford, dispersing ease

like conscience or a cop, reminding me in Hilary air

that betrayal lays in me and everyone like a smart whore?

You belonged in a strictly legendary Oxford

with the legendary names and the cautionary verses.

Now get out of the Hudson Valley and my heart.

Your acts and reasons are hidden in poems I do not read.

And there is a black-haired girl who has been shot down

and a boy stricken with Keats, and a green promised road

winding down along the Wallkill to a winery

and a day now, all of whom must be attended to.