WILLIAM OXLEY 61

Getting away from it all My friend, you say you want ’To get away from it all‘ (Don’t we all - sometimes?) But I ask ‘away from what?’ The pressures your youth chose Which middle-age cannot stomach? Or perhaps from that Blind inner land Lit only by disembodied eyes Which, after years of pooh-poohing Philosophers and priests, Has now shown up Like a palimpsest beneath The threadbare pages of your life?

Would you take this sudden self-questioning You’ve so-long lived without - This still-mortgaged metaphysicality ? Not surely to some dormitory Hamlet in the car-raped countryside? For though seas are deep And skies still wide There’s nowhere sensible left to hide When the land’s trepanned By a surgery of planners’ ends, An over-bandaged skull with powerful roads That is become a real estate Of pricey village greens Serving only towns’ demands.

Surely your best bet‘s now to stay Where you womed are And hope the rest will go away?

And to where