I rowed for one of St. Catherine’s “beer” eights, or social eights, at Oxford. We would haul the big wooden boat out before sun rose in the winter so we could be out of the water by the time the Blues, the serious rowers, needed the river. The Isis is what the Thames becomes when it snakes through Oxford.

1.

We heave the great oak hull over our heads,
Lower it into the dark off the dock.
Oars clunk into brass oarlocks. Latches clink shut.
We push off past the soft black velvet of barge
Chains and their anchors swathed in river moss.
Our blades, bearing St. Catherine’s cutting wheel,
Catch and lug us forward into the dark.
Our knock-hard longboat divides the river—
Venetian oarsmen, Egyptian pullers,
Athenian arms raising speed to ram.
Frozen wind fans Hard Shield-ferns in the meadows,
Nods slender thistle, courses through stone walls
As freezing chalk curls through the granite sky.

2.

Swans, stirred from their invisible stillness,
Lunge at our prow, as if to assault us.
At the last yard, they pad and splash up
From the cold Lethean glass and soar
Into the thinning darkness above us.
We pull and watch our milky wake.

3.

The moon withers over limestone,
And from the night emerge the reaching edges
Of English elms, silver birches, star sedge,
Aspens, ashes, and alders. Beyond,
Sashed in retreating lunar mist, the spires,
The bell tower, and, beneath it, the priory
Wrecked by Norse maulers in the departed dark,
Venetian façades clung with red ivy,
Norman chevrons enclosed by barbs of holly.

The Oxonian Review features essays and reviews of recently published work in literature, politics, history, science and the arts. It is published by graduate members of the University of Oxford, although it welcomes contributions from other University members and non-Oxford affiliates. Contributors bear sole responsibility for its content, which in no way reflects the views of the University of Oxford.

Founded as The Oxonian Review of Books at Balliol College, Oxford, in 2001, The Oxonian Review publishes biweekly, on Mondays, with a yearly print edition released at the end of each year. Published in print on a termly basis from 2001 to 2008, The Oxonian Review relaunched in January 2009 as an online biweekly with a yearly print run.