Midsummer is the dog day Sabbath
and the mower’s mown despite the solstice
straw lanes where the plants grow up mammoth
and burning stone’s pressed like a poultice
on the rampant philosophers’ earth -
civilisation is what goes to seed
and reaches its true size on such turf
having escaped the bare suburb of weeds
just as your mother did - no momentum
kein Augenblick in even the streams
but blue embrace and long staying in sun -
a turquoise imago touched the still dream
from him from her you come landed like night
saying no to such resistant light
The King’s Arms
Oxford
25 June 2018
Holywell Cemetery is a graveyard in Oxford where philosophers, authors, heads of colleges and scientists are buried. Midsummer’s Day was on Sunday 24 June in 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere.