I was at Borders couple of nights ago. I caught sight of W H Auden’s Dyer’s Hand. His self-edited lectures, talks and criticisms – mostly delivered in Oxford when he was the Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Reading one of the essays, standing in Borders, with the smell of new books, and the faint whispers of conversations, I was no longer there. I was walking on the icy bridge over the Cherwell, by the St Cross Cemetery and finding my way to the wooden bench below the solitary crabapple tree that groaned with the weight of death’s tragedies among the graves. I heard its groan many an evening in my sojourn in that City of Dreaming Spires.
While dons cycled past home for dinners, and students scuttled to reading rooms, I sometimes, read gravestones. They hold many tales. They also hold peace that cannot be found in life.
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