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Of those who’ve done so much, left in the lurch
Through furthering Den’s literary bent.
He’s stopped attending lectures, blown the rent
To shelter in this all but disused church,
A sweat of monsters beading on its eaves,
This sentry-box in lieu of an address.
Yearning to write, he’s learned to teach from men
With targets, goals to which they must adhere,
Themselves regretting the proffered career
That he’s let go. His failures pounce while Den
Still fumbles at the latch of consciousness
In this, his latest of unfixed abodes.
Twenty last week and homeless, that’s the thing,
Ambitions snuffed and dreams long since wrung out,
A student loan he dare not think about
Here in his hutch, its corners harbouring
Their soil and silver foil in abject lodes
When all he’s ever craved is poetry,
The fire that Keats and Blake and Ginsburg had.
To be it, not to teach it. He can’t bear
Chalk-dusted years of common-room despair
Nor the reproof of hard-up Mum and Dad
Who’ve gone without for his tuition fee.
Thus one door closes, while another shuts
Where Offa’s sons raised the communion cup.
To doss in Saxon palaces and forts
Might hold, he thinks, a poetry of sorts
So with a sigh he stands and gathers up
His bag as though it were his spilling guts,
Recalling meanwhile that it’s Friday night
