Tony Curtis
Cambridge Sonnet
While Bron was being interviewed at Clare,
I walked the Backs and paid to sit
In King’s College Chapel. If man’s celestial need encloses air
And shapes a special place from stone and glass and wit,
Then none excels Wastell’s soaring fan vault,
The whole arched magnificence finished by a screen of oak
That bloated, eighth Henry gave, and Anne Boleyn whose fault
Was to displeasure him. Her white neck stained the block.
There’s blood, no doubt, on art that celebrates and saves -
Rubens’s solid, fleshy, stagey Adoration,
The organ’s apocalyptic bellow crashing in waves
Of need and praise over choir and congregation.
Fellows in Clare with frayed pullovers, decide my daughter’s fate:
The privileged faith of another age uplifts, distracts me while I wait.
I walked the Backs and paid to sit
In King’s College Chapel. If man’s celestial need encloses air
And shapes a special place from stone and glass and wit,
Then none excels Wastell’s soaring fan vault,
The whole arched magnificence finished by a screen of oak
That bloated, eighth Henry gave, and Anne Boleyn whose fault
Was to displeasure him. Her white neck stained the block.
There’s blood, no doubt, on art that celebrates and saves -
Rubens’s solid, fleshy, stagey Adoration,
The organ’s apocalyptic bellow crashing in waves
Of need and praise over choir and congregation.
Fellows in Clare with frayed pullovers, decide my daughter’s fate:
The privileged faith of another age uplifts, distracts me while I wait.
Page(s) 59
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