The Master’s Field

 

For Alan Kingsley, In Memoriam

When our friend sent news about you

Walking that final stretch of road, he asked

If I would write, because he thought it best

“To be reminded of friends and happy times.”

Memories of the three of us playing like

Children at recess in the Master’s Field

Between lectures on poetry, philosophy,

“Aspects of structural design with glass,”

Walks at Christ Church Meadows,

Strolls through St Catherine’s Fields

And Magdalen’s Deer Park, wine

And mussels, chess and hearty laughter—

Flooded me with such force

That I felt at a loss to find

Comforting words to offer

During your final days.

I remembered Mark’s wedding

In Adelaide, the vineyard, the two of us

Walking in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens,

With youth on our side.

Exchanging news with you became

A heartbreaking game of wait and see.

No one learns how to die young. Now

That you have gone, we are gathering

To celebrate the “one of us”. You

Brimming with smiles, always calm,

Always thinking, then back to that inner smile

That kept us companionship in happy times.

*

Alan, you will hold the rest of us together

As much as memory does: gently and forever.

The picture of yourself you sent to me

Is of a boy playing on the floor with his father:

It’s one I have never seen. It’s a part of you

I never met before, my dear friend—a parting gift?

The little boy’s eye light takes me by surprise

Like a wish half-fulfilled, or like a thought

That barely touches the mind and leaves before

You have the chance to learn what it is. Tonight’s

Salmon sky surprised me in the garden, and, like your

Life, vanished before I could record it in my mind’s eye.

I see Mark and you in the Master’s Field at Balliol

In that moment before the Professor of Poetry’s Lecture,

When it was so hard to tear myself from our chasing game,

To go learn about the fields of just and perfect words.

14 December 2021