Here the conqueror towering in pride of soul
Virgil(70-19 BCE) quoting Quintus Ennius(239-169 BCE)
Listening to Donald Davie and Thom Gunn
reading their poems on the BBC on May 18th 1958,
when my father was ten and my mother was seven
and all my grandparents younger than I am now,
I am struck how the youthful, hesitant voice
of Gunn doesn't fit his muscular image
in black-and-white photographs, it's the voice
of someone who doesn't look like a surfer,
a beach bum easily mistaken for Neal Cassidy,
but a bookworm, and elicitates sympathy
that I otherwise might deny. Davie sounds
like a radio news broadcaster, speaks too fast,
harsh sentences condemning the listeners,
raining down brutalist buildings on their
internal, recovering urban landscapes.
So very different here, these university men
to be washed on the same Turtle Island
shores, where they were some kind of
trophies proudly presented on campuses,
having been carried out to these intellectual
legionary encampments like some
captured Greeks to record the empire's
greatness in the Republic's last full century.
18.03.2025
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