Somerville
‘tutorials’, ‘quads’, the plash of punts
mist on an autumn evening, biking round
the sheldonian, invisible in fog
the libraries’ air as still as sleep
halls full of talking students, comfort, food
portraits of faces more familiar than living dons
whose liberal care was mild as oxford’s spring
sub-fusc was deadly dark, like tutored ants
and schools a marbled monument to hope
contrast it with our shabby, cheap, warm house
of seven undergraduates and friends
three years of searching study and hot soup
from friars on st giles on winter afternoons
Linda Appleby