IN AN OLD BOOKSHOP

In an old bookshop

perusing on a shelf

near an English pavilion

meeting Jane Kenyon

Stevie Smith and Bishop

and for a cold shilling

to bet from that day on

that there was more wealth
to thank their wisdom to 

that any on earth's billing

or in the bank or any coupon
in a time of killing melancholy
for an exile who spoke to us
at Oxford with motioning lips
that war hypnotized a crime
realized for our humanity
in the Seventies political folly
that poetry could in our time
be recognized to share vocally
in a time of radical Apocalypse.