Sitting at Hopkins’ desk, though not on his chair.
This one is far too modern;
not a handmade carefully crafted
Victorian seat with spindles and stays.
And maybe the desk is of later vintage.
Its green leatherette top looks far
too unworn and no one has carved a name
nor splashed ink on the polished surround
But still he sat here or thereabouts.
His presence is in the quiet of this room
at the end of a corridor which now bears his name
and the only sounds are the odd upstairs
footsteps and the clank of pipes – expanding
and contracting – which were not here to accompany
his breathing – as they do mine.
He would have taken books from the shelves,
though not from these grey steel ones holding books
of a later century – well some of them.
Yet Hopkins sat here or thereabouts;
with his certainties and anxieties.
The dappled things of his mind.
In the sea blown winds, the trees he saw
on a pastoral forehead of Wales,
still sway and rustle, shedding their leaves.
Though maybe not these branches
and the trunks are of more recent decades ago.
But, yes, Hopkins sat here and viewed this view;
and even (?) this bookshelf with its mysterious notice
“More on the other Side”