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Front quadrangle, Corpus Christi College
In 1972 I spent a glorious summer at Corpus Christi College, University
of Oxford, England. I was enrolled in an advanced summer school English literature
course which focused on subjective essay response writing. After
touring various geographical locations directly related to great works of English
literature, my fellow students and I were encouraged to present our personal
thoughts and observations in an informal and creative way. I remember composing a rather
surreal essay in lower case - except for the names of notable poets and authors
- upon returning from a field trip to Tintern Abbey in Wales. Earlier on
that propitious day, I had recited Wordsworth's infamous lines about the
Wye Valley and its monastic ruins to a good friend of mine who had come down
from London to join our literary excursion. Aspiring to be a much-loved poet
myself, I also embraced another poetic voice,
that of a certain Shropshire lad, whose little book of brooding, yet highly inspirational
verse was covetly carried around in the breast pockets of infantry soldiers
during the Great War, the war that was supposed to end all wars. Well, war will not end in my lifetime, and time certainly mocks some of us, yet how I do look back fondly upon those
Oxford days! I read The Lord of the Rings up there in my cozy little room overlooking
the main quadrangle at Corpus, and adventurously wandered the narrow lanes and lush garden ways
that so reverently enshroud the eclectic assortment of colleges that make up the university proper.
I learned to "punt" in no time flat, and I remember taking the wife of my professor and
several of her joyous friends for a little juant down the Cherwell. I was earnest, long
before I ever read the play, and often found my thoughts turning towards Ireland, that land
of the "trembling sod". Years later, I would find that trite expression emotionally
overwhelming when I researched my Irish roots, which necessarily demanded my personal
examination of The Annals of the Four Masters. Out of nostalgia for
scholarship and higher education, I lugged those seven heavy volumes up and down the hill at
the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. You're always bound to
find something perplexing when you go poking around in the past; and, what I did find, was
very unsettling at first, as it definitely challenged my deep-rooted love for Oxford and English
literature in general. How was I, a descendant of a proud Irish dynasty that stubbornly persisted
for 500 years, to go on loving Oxford and Dickens, not to mention Shakespeare, Wordsworth,
Keats and Shelley, when English imperialists had taken so much away from my illustrious
ancestors, including in many instances their priceless lives? To be honest with you, I am still dealing with that nagging question. Yet in the end,
I know I will never betray my summer at Corpus, for did not the bells toll for me? It's funny
how certain images stay with you long after the fact, as I will always remember gazing down
into that dark goldfish pond full of flickering light in Christ Chruch quad. Darkness and light, and
how they play upon one another, have always intrigued me. And that was Oxford in the end,
a continuous intermingling, almost sheer lovemaking, of darkness and light, light and darkness.
I came the closest to what some may call God there, and over the years I know I have strayed this way and the
other, but my heart is still filled with reverence for the past. They say the child is
father to the man, but may I add ever so humbly, that the young man is also father to the
older man. Thank you father, for keeping my memory green, and thank you father, for all those deep
thoughts inbetween. As the Good Lord Buddha intimated, thoughtfulness is the road to
immortality, and that is the road my muse would have me on! And so here they are, the three Oxford poems. In my emails to several editors of
The Pelican Record at Corpus, I compared them to Satie's 3 Gymnopedies, as
they echo each other while stubbornly maintaining their separate identities. They are filled with light
and darkness, the light and darkness of Oxford, the light of this life, and the darkness of
the grave. It is my hope that one hundred years from now someone will rediscover them, and
kindredly delve into their eccentric simplicity to unearth the complex human being behind
them. We are all complex human beings, aren't we? Yes, very complicated, and some of us have
to create to deal with our overwhelming thoughts and feelings about being alive while death
lurks ever so closely in the shadows around us. So I beseech the ghosts of my ancestors to
forgive me, and to embrace my love for Oxford. I beseech them to come out of the darkness
and into the light again. Prodesse non nocere. take me to the roses where the masons are kept busy i know the roses weep for me i'll go punting on still waters take me to the roses sometimes i dream of Oxford sometimes i dream of Oxford sometimes i dream of Oxford sometimes i dream of Oxford sometimes i dream of Oxford in my room at Oxford i gazed from my grey window i called myself a poet i read about the hobbits yes, in my room at Oxford Oxford Days Click on crest Other poems:
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