University Poem by Tom Courtney

In fifty years the university
from a quadrant of four founding structures
to this immense and complex sprawl
a true city within a city

All this set in elegance and beauty
shaded walkways and flowered gardens
towering eucalyptus
giant brooms sweeping the sky

Here within the campus
the school of higher education puffing and churning
an engine of the society
immaculate heroic romantic
and almost practical

The red sandstone buildings
of Southern Mediterranean style
stand grand and stately
and barely able to contain the fevers
of armies of undergraduates
advanced battalions of post grads
seeking credentials honors vocations
A great ant hill a bee hive
a honeycomb of the hearts and minds

The inspiration the perspiration
this brief island in time
for a curious mix of peace
and the intensest anxieties of youth

Mere teens tumble in
with the wildest of passions
and the hottest of dreams
many with the perseverance
and fortitude to pursue them

I return to the university
after spending six years there
I come to walk the Janss Steps again
to linger where I had been forced to hurry
and to hasten
where I had spent so many interminable nights
in solitary studious oblivion

I am now through with formal education
(I say) and interested only
in reminiscing

And I find myself examining the faces
of the still-enrolled, still captive
passing through I read deeply
into those faces

I am looking for advance signs
of the inevitable crumbling of idealism
and I find myself looking earnestly
for any cracks in their stout armor

Unable to help myself
I am seeking to dress my own
unhealed wounds