Here's a poem that is the most recent one I've written.
I make reference to a London landmark
here, Parliament Hill, which is in the North of London
on Hampstead Heath.
And from which you can see, most of the time,
you can see right into the middle of London.
You can see as far as St Paul's Cathedral.
I also make a reference to Lamartine,
who is a very tearful poet who is very sorry for himself
that I had to read at school.
After I'd written this poem last week, I looked him up again.
And he's just as tearful and just as sorry for himself
as I remembered.
The poem is called "Autobiography."
And what I mean by this title is that if I
were to write my autobiography, which I don't really
intend to do, this is what I'd like it to be like.
"Autobiography."
"The sniff of the real--
that's what I'd want to get.
How it felt to sit on Parliament Hill on a May evening,
studying for exams.
Skinny, 17, dissatisfied.
Yet sniffing such a potent air.
The smell of grass in heat from the day's sun.
I've been walking through the damp rich ways by the ponds
and now lay on the upper grass with Lamartine's poems.
Life seemed all loss.
And what was more, I had lost whatever
it was before I'd even had it.
A green dry prospect, distant babble of children.
And beyond, distinct at the end of the globe,
St. Paul's like a stone thimble.
Longing so hard to make inclusions that the longing has
become in memory an inclusion."