It at once seemed a place familiar,
like a well seasoned boot, yet foreign,
like some mystical land.
There was the old pub with the Ostler
sitting in it.
There was the hill, with the brick turret
sitting on it.
There was the crooked village street without
a villager in it,
and the mature oaks marching up the hill,
interspersed with the dark dead skeletons
of old Elm killed by disease blown
in from the orange lands long ago.
How many times have I travelled
these well trodden paths,
with people I knew then,
but do not know now.
Where are the youthful faces?
Where is the fervour of desire
and insightful longing?
Gone they say to a foreign land
a place of shades and
half remembered truths,
mouthed kisses of love,
the physical pulse
of reaction and attraction.
Gone beyond grasp,
touch or hope of redemption.
Gone beyond amendment of
those ‘revisions and decisions,’
those half formed thoughts
of an immature soul and a life-time
of care-worn complexity.
Although I walk this way again
I do not walk the same path.
I am a visitor in a strange landscape,
dragging my personal requisites
along the road behind.
The unfulfilled segments of dreams
neatly packaged for me alone
that cannot be given away or shared.
My load is light, but my burden is heavy.
To be shouldered and suffered
until the coming of night.
