Because you have to be pyschic to know when poets and writers are giving readings at Johns Hopkins University (they don't publicize their calendar through email notifications/mailing lists) GRRR, I just found out that Scottish poet Prof. Douglas Dunn (from St. Andrews) is giving three readings at Hopkins. There's one tonight at Homewood - the Percy Graeme Turnball Memorial Lecture - 6 pm in Maryland 110 - that's the second. There was another last night. The third is Thursday, the 15th, at the School of Medicine near Hopkins Hospital, in Hurd Hall - 5 pm, if there are locals interested.
For those of you who can't make it - here are a few of his poems:
THE KALEIDOSCOPE
To climb these stairs again, bearing a tray,
Might be to find you pillowed with your books,
Your inventories listing gowns and frocks
As if preparing for a holiday.
Or, turning from the landing, I might find
My presence watched through your kaleidoscope,
A symmetry of husbands, each redesigned
In lovely forms of foresight, prayer and hope.
I climb these stairs a dozen times a day
And, by the open door, wait, looking in
At where you died. My hands become a tray
Offering me, my flesh, my soul, my skin.
Grief wrongs us so. I stand, and wait, and cry
For the absurd forgiveness, not knowing why.
__________________________________________
LOVE POEM
I live in you, you live in me;
We are two gardens haunted by each other.
Sometimes I cannot find you there,
There is only the swing creaking, that you have just left,
Or your favourite book beside the sundial.
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