Vinegar

In the stone dungeon of academe
I shore up words
frame speech
press truth from the grapes of meaning.

I bottle its sour wine.
Labelled.
Never to be imbibed.

For its vinegar does not draw forth the colours of life
as promised by the gods, instead,
it leaves me with the thirst of Ulysses.

^

Biography

Charles Travis is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Historical/Cultural Geography at Trinity College Dublin. His dissertation topic is the creation of a literary geography of Irish writers who published during the 1930s. His poetry has appeared previously in the Trinity College Journal 'College Green' and in the Electric Acorn. He can be reached at: travisc@tcd.ie