Old Boy At UEA

What seemed to us a consummation,

A coming of age, to life, to our selves

In concrete abstraction of hippy elves

Busy in hives of abstract concretion,

Essays in ringcraft, spaced-age constructions

Of new humanities, new chosen twelves,

New depths and heights, soarings and delves,

Was just the dawn of this Urban Every Airman.

This Now Universe of New Spacious Age

With its Tom Paine wing, Climate Change lung,

Julian-vision "beach under the paves", 

Greyed Apollo flight steps, wild boldly-go stage,

Beam me up up-lifts, vertiginous walkways

Through heath, sky and water, has passed - to the young.

February 2023

Note: All but half a century after I first visited UEA for my interview (March 1973; they made me an unconditional offer I couldn’t refuse) I spent a weekend there, working in the Library, watching Six Nations rugby in the SU bar, walking all my old acres of heath and parkland, munching through a Full Elizabeth Fryed breakfast in the Sportpark, making films on my Iphone of old haunts and new Broads and wondering at all the new build. (What’s your name? University Plain? No, earthling. ‘Norwich Research Park’.)