Midnight in an empty study
for my father-in-law, Professor William Spooner Hemp, FRAeS
Out of the workshop, out of the dusty 'forties
you stroll, a young man with curly tousled hair,
pipe stuck between your teeth, and drop-dead gorgeous.
You structured bridges. Kept planes in the air.
Behind you stretched a line of skilled mechanics,
coopers, the men who built the early Fords.
Photoelasticity, Aerodynamics -
incomprehensible! My tools are words,
so poor and weak. I've cleared your bookshelves, closely
shadowed by that young man I never knew.
Perhaps he'll wander in, amused to find me
at your desk, writing poems about you.
Midnight; tobacco scent rises from the furrowed
pages of your classics, Eddington and Jeans.
This gap is wider than between two cultures.
I sob, who never understood machines.
Page(s) 67
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The