Meeting by d'Overbroeks

1

So I had walked not far short of an hour

In a plodding sort of way, but then I winnowed

Back, a passport left behind, a card withheld,

Jangled again against that real world,

And on home turf as well,

Where the dons threw up quiet piles

For Anglican courtesans,

Where their houses swap for schooling,

And their schools for scholarships.

One of these is d’Overbroek’s.

(This, Dutch I think, has always rhymed with hooks.)


So I lacked card and purpose, and floated along the past,

And thought of a house broad and red,

Recalled the weblocked garden shed,

The fountain where the toad it was that tumbled

Out on a pang of cold, and was eaten by a tender dovish wife.


On the way to Moore Place, to One Hundred and Three,

Where I grew up (though didn’t), where an evacuee

Cousin had once been billeted (we had the ground floor;

Further up lived Ian McEwan

Further still a harrassed woman

Who one peculiar Wednesday was indicted as a whore),


Between Lloyd’s and the garden and the ground-floor flat,

Sold to a Swede called Blog who culled the front,

And on account of wasting north-disease will cop it soon,

As I say, obstructing my meander

Sits the mother of Art but not not of art. Sits d’Overbroeks.


2

I walked under the sign that raised the obscure Hollander

To Oxford’s pantheon, which means learning’s Valhalla

I suppose. I saw a lovely girl going downtown

With a boy who was familiar (I think only as a type),

And felt a bit embarrassed, just as if

I was – let’s say – an uncle. (Let me finish.)

Let’s put my brother and I about twenty odd years snagged back.

He has a daughter – let us call her Clem (a family name),

And he says to me, “Minoo, Clem

Fouled up some exams, but I Think She’s Good At Art.

I’ve put her down for d’Overbroek’s, so not too far

From your college (I get those saints confused).”

Now I’m a Fellow (the First pre-supposed

Which if I read so little it can’t be),

But I’m not good for that much else. I never

Married, though it hardly was my fault, nor was my aim,

It just was allotted, like the flats of Jowett Walk.

Olly hasn’t read my books (as far as I know)

But I’m trusted to keep a cloistered eye on little Clem,

(Who is not, by the way, my godchild. Niece will do.)

So I invite her to tea, and we postpone for a term,

Not meeting, then a year, and then

I see her studying art on some yuppie tyke’s pects.

I am disturbed, and my life of my mother

Is delayed, and Olly doesn’t invite me to revel Christmas

With the family (the college goose is good).


3

Cut. Cut. Enough of real her and him and unreal lot beside them.

That’s not how it will happen nor how it will happen now,

You just don’t like that lad because he is one,

And now they’re gone. I walk past d’Overbroeks

And see someone who doesn’t work there, couched

Beside the bus-stop. He’s eight times taller than me.

I’m dressed in mourning for the night before,

Black coat and trousers, floral shirt beneath,

The other wears a fag-white tracksuit top,

The fag itself unlit, the hair golden,

Hardy and ropey. You could keep things in it.

The colours make the conjunction a bit

Heraldic, like everything else,

And I like to think as my coat sweeps

And billows, that I take a Black Knight role,

But things like him were made to quell me then,

And my smart money would still back them now.