A Bit Late, But Still - Vincent O'Sullivan

I would like to talk with kindly Sister

Gabriel, with nervy Brother Remigius,

about eternity, say. I would listen

more attentively than ever I did

in the room with the high square windows

in Surrey Crescent, or the long prefab

above the gully in Richmond Road.

I would listen, old instructors,

as you began the story I always

longed to hear. I’d watch one of you turn 

your plain silver ring as you did

when you told us simpler stories.

When even a child thought, How

handsome she is, how wonderful

if we could see the colour of her hair.

And the other, that considerate man

martyred daily in the fifth form’s

colosseum, how good to see you dab,

again, like Louis Armstrong, your

perfect handkerchief, ease your stiff

collar in the summer heat – to hear

you report, ‘It is even better, boys,

Than any of us imagined.’ The palm

and the crown as certain as the next

bell. To hear you both talking

of that would be something. And something,

I suppose, in its sad, distant way,to say even this — how good it would be.





Sharpe, I. (Ed.). (2001, January 1). Best New Zealand Poems 2001. Retrieved from http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters/bnzp/2001/home.html