READERS of a literary bent will spot the allusions to some of the classic poems in the English canon.

There's a message of frustrated but perpetual hope in the lines by Lawrence Ferlinghetti from the anthology Don't Bring Me No Rocking Chair: Poems on Ageing, edited by John Halliday with foreword by Joan Bakewell (Bloodaxe Books, £9.95).

from I AM WAITING

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to

come again

youth's dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless

rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the

Grecian Urn

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am waiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder.