Meditation on a Cambridge Past

I fell asleep at three this afternoon
And woke at seven. It was dusk
At seven, in this late August in my room,
In this late year, ninety-three.
And I felt a feint unease
At the thought of summer
Suddenly coming to an end;
The morning nip, the browning trees.
The night before briefly reeled
Before my eyes. Dancing, sweating
To music of twenty years ago. High-heeled
Boots, collars, nylon, dacron, polyester -
The camp burlesque of "Year-yester,"
Boogie nights, nineteen-seventy-three.

Cambridge, I believe you are
My first real home. The first place
I have throughly inhabited, more
Than anywhere in years past.
I've become comfortable with your face,
As one does of routine beauty.
I kick against your perpendicular,
Renaissance, Gothic less now, now I
Am older. In the present, in particular
An aspect of your past days
To me acts as an indicator of the malaise
Of this society, England in
The inevitable 20C fin de siecle.
My vital lifetime lies herein.

It's almost as if I am sixty not twenty
Years back. Europe, cradle of all we have
As we dizzily spin into the next millenium,
My Europe is in war again. Plenty
Of times this century, peace's tedium
Has been shattered by Europe's clamour.
Amongst the Cambridge I know now,
Touristed, jail-bait-thronged, no glamour,
Ghosts of nineteen-thirty-three speak
In what we laughingly now call innocence.
Speak to me now ghosts. I'm tired of our
Cynicism of your patronage of communism.
Tell me of the facist atrocities in Spain.
Illustrate to me Picasso's canvases of pain.

Tell me now, who is the despised hero?
Tell me of your thoughts on the appeasement
Of the Czechs; the Jews and Queers and
Intellects under Stalin, Hitler. Sarajevo,
What of it? Tell me soldiers, tell me Owen,
Butterworth and Brooke of the games at hand
From the time you died with Ferdinand.
Tell me all you ghosts of this horrific century,
Tell me what is wrong with us? Bosnia
Exhibits it's demon's wares on our TV screen.
Papers sell and the publishers get rich.
In Cambridge, the tourist trade is seen
As a necessary evil, for local prosperity.
Moral bankruptcy, forgetting our legacy.


Where is the Cambridge of thirty-three?
Are we now really so wise, so superior, so happy
That we cannot be idealistic, innocent again?
Men from this town fought and died in Spain.
Now Cambridge men drink, play laser-quest,
Trampoline onto velcro walls in velcro vests.
I'm angry and upset, that in this media
Saturated world, Bosnia is not cause for avid
Action, what-must-be-done; now tedium
Is our collective response. War in the Balkans
Makes us middle-classed think more of
Emma Thompson, blue stockings. And how to avoid
The queue at Branagh's "Much Ado."
Mostar has fallen. Barbarity. But who

Cares now? The IRA bomb the past away.
Great architecture of our civilisations blasted
Into obscure dust. Twyford Down, for example.
Even British Rail is being dissected, drowned
In the loch of noble privitisation. For the first
Time in my life, I really feel that society
Has run it's course, as it embraces all pretence
Of knowing where it's going and what it's doing.
I was frisked last night, This never
Happens at a socially unacceptable queer event.
On gay nights, the bouncers are there to keep
The violence out. So this is my life. Society
Accepts hate and despises love. My
Hands sweat. I exhale. I cry quietly.