Poems

ELDORADO
(Remembering Francis Norman, Bookseller)

And so, no Saturday door to be angled through
     And find you again,
Puzzling about our latter-day quids and quidnuncs,
     Your Proust, Montaigne,
While Heath Street under a patchy cloudscape suffers
     A water-stain,

Or shuffling in, your keep-net a Sotheby's bag,
     (The catch indifferent today),
With quiz and chaffer and chat, with news of the ones
     That got away.
They settle to lighter dust on my patchwork shelves,
     Your Dryden, Gray.

A Professorial Chair, the spoils of Time
     Brown at your feet,
Babel: her grammars and guides in curling vellum,
...