'Jack' Lewis' Lament for Mrs. Minty Moor

Today is the anniversary of the death of my friend R.B. and to mark the occasion here is one of the many poems he sent me over the years,. It's to do with C.S.Lewis, who is not a favourite with me and it is in manuscript form so I may have misread the odd word. I know that C.S.Lewis was known as 'Jack' and his brother 'Warnie' and I remember being told by Richard that Lewis' dog was called 'Mr Papworth' but I am not at all sure about the reference to 'Barboes'  at the end. If you can correct or add anything please do. When Richard was at Oxford he did briefly to tear himself away from the steam trains to hear C.S.Lewis lecture and I know he was an admirer, even managing to smuggle a copy of The Screwtape Letters (which he knew I detested) into my house, via my wife. The poem has its weaknesses but is laced with the sadness that, as a lifelong bachelor himself, Richard shared with his subject.

He signed the poem 'T' which he often used as an abbreviation of his pseudonym 'TOLETTRAB' - his surname backwards.

'Jack' Lewis' Lament for Mrs. Minty Moor, by Tolettrab   (R.B.)

'Condemned to Hope's delusive mine'

(In Johnson's pregnant phrase),

I feel but all inadequate

To voice your rightful praise.

How sad that I was just too young

While you were passing old

For loving and for showing love -

Too hot and yet too cold -

Now Warnie's on the binge again

And I am left alone -

And where is 'Mr, Papworth' with the papers?

When you and I lived at 'The Kilns'

Ahead we looked not far,

With Maureen growing up apace

And I without a car.

My college rooms were a retreat

In which to write my books

And hold inspired tutorials

To the sound of cawing rooks.

Now Barfield's gone to Leicester,

And Tolkien's left for York,

I wait for Mr. Papworth with the papers.

The Inklings are disbanded now,

And none can fill their place,

I've moved across to Cambridge

And found a kind of grace.

A confirmed bachelor was I

And had been since a boy,

But in the evening of my life

I met and married JOY.

But I have not forgotten you

'Barboes' remembers still:-

And here is Mr. Papworth with the papers.

                                                  T