Oxford Sunday Morning Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

In this corner of Oxford it was always Sunday morning -
the silent chimneys once bustling with the kitchen smoke
of a hundred dead cooks sending their burnt offerings
swirling like incense above the respectable tall red roofs:

and dons, newly emancipated from celibacy,
returned from Matins in carriages or by bicycle.
Divesting their academic regalia with a sigh
they greet their wives -or cooks- with nuggets of college gossip.

Today the bells ring unanswered, a sagging crucifix
unacknowledged in the sabbath calm, and Jaguars
multiply where once were gardens, while property prices
alone preserve the dream of an England whose ghosts have fled.


As church bells were ringing,1055-1115, Sunday,29th September 2002