John Peter Unrau

A MESSAGE FROM THE YORK
COMMUNITY TO THE UNIVERSITY:

responding to the daily website
"MESSAGE FROM THE UNIVERSITY
TO THE YORK COMMUNITY"

Hi there YORK UNIVERSITY --
all dozen or so of you and your lawyer--
up there in your highrise concrete retreat

It's your COMMUNITY here:

well, about 30,000 or so of us I guess,
undergrads, graduate students
part-timers, full-timers and staff
-- you know, the incidental

but unfortunately necessary
accompaniments of
and just now impediments to
the appropriate unfolding
of your upward Corporate path

We're so proud, O UNIVERSITY,
to have been chosen
to be part of that path
--each of us just a tiny pebble
under your triumphant strides

along this way that must be tried

--TENTANDA VIA!!--

just so delighted to be here,
to have been called
O UNIVERSITY
to be witnesses to this Destiny

that is unfolding
before our awestruck gaze

O UNIVERSITY (all dozen or so of you),
Collective Apostlehood of Innovative Excellence! --
we, your COMMUNITY, deeply regret
that in this democracy
no Knighthoods or Dameships are available
to enwreath your laureate brows

But behold, far in the west,
high on Burnaby Mountain,
one of your number,
triumphant conqueror of the last of these
little nastinesses committed by us

your COMMUNITY:
installed in glory, a new President
-- himself and his bureaucrat buddies
rewarded, as each of you too
O UNIVERSITY (all dozen or so of you)

may be rewarded for your unyielding heroism
by any number of Canada's 60-odd
Educative Corporations,
not to speak of Government Ministries

A consummation awaited
O UNIVERSITY
with humble
-- almost prostrate -- anticipation
by your YORK COMMUNITY

As read at the Founders Gate, Nov 29th, 2000

John Unrau

English Department, School of Arts and Letters,
Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies,
York University