Jerusalem

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