I am a student again. I sit in the back of the classroom
with some women around me.
When I leave I put on my coat and think
I could offer to drive one of the women home, but I don’t.
Then I am at a banquet and someone is telling the poet George Johnston
that the university will name a building after him.
Jeanne, his wife, is there and she says she could cry hearing this.
George is wearing a very white shirt, he’s shaved off his beard,
and I embrace him, congratulate him on the building with his name.
Later, I ask the woman “Was George a student at the U of T?”
and she says he was and that’s why a building will be named after him.
6.
I return to 4614 Oxford Avenue to visit our old home.
I am in the flat when the present tenants arrive,
I point to out to them the leaves I’ve just raked,
how I’ve improved the lawns.
In the living room there are four fireplaces:
three are new, gas or electric. We visit other rooms.
I’ve forgotten my camera. I tell them who used to live in this building.
They seem to remember the people who lived upstairs,
they may have committed suicide in the 1980s.
I go for a walk, and it’s all traffic rushing by.
An old woman holds up her hand and crosses the street.
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