Prelude

Et in Arcadia ego

Arcady and Eden, gardens sensed
  As sites of primal innocence
    Before experience
      Has worked its worse:

Such myths raise questions that undermine
  The rural idyll by reminding
    Us as Vergil did
      Of our mortality.

The Fylde

On the bus from Barcelona somewhere
North of Cordoba the woman next
To me cried out with joy, ‘¡Ay mí tierra!’

More than thirty years have come and gone
Since I felt her exultation. Vexed
Am I still by her unspoken question.

‘¿Donde está su tierra?’ The rural Fylde
Of Lancashire comes first to mind, despite
The drenching mizzle borne on clouds piled
By the western winds that render day as night.
Nostalgia of old age occasionally leads
Me to evoke green fields and winding lanes,
Dutch barns, and hear again the whistling speeds
Of easily remembered express trains.
A photograph shows boys in sailor suits
Serving as shy Britannia’s body guard.
They stand attentive for the photo shoots
Save one whose posture brands him as ill-starred.
For two years earlier, his mother died
And still from time to time for her he cried.

Holderness

Pre-Norman names – Amounderness and Holderness
Denote the leap I made from west to east
To go to college, where a war time army camp
Of Nissen huts surrounded by a wood
Did duty for a hall of residence.
Unpropitious as this sounds I look
Back fondly on my four years spent in Camp
Hall Cottingham, three miles from Hull’s
      Red brick college.

A skiving student, I achieved
  A kind of education
Watching foreign films,
  Quite free from condemnation.

Spare-time cycling gave much pleasure
  In a landscape of green plains
Wolds and medieval churches
Before the poet Larkin biked its lanes.

The much-bombed city being then restored
Revealed its past of worthy sons –
Andrew Marvell and Wilberforce –
And memorable sites – the plotting parlour
Of the old White Hart, the counting houses
        Along the River Hull

Eight years after leaving the city
I lived a while in Withernsea
        And so, made Holderness
        A possible contender
      In the quest to find my land.

Market Rasen

Not long after my first marriage
And first teaching post, I gave
The green light to my brother, now
  A pacifist, to live with us
  In Lincolnshire where he could work
  At farming, and so save himself
From our stepmother’s harassment.

Not long after he arrived an amber light
  Began to flash its warning, though
  I failed to see it blinked for me.

As fraternity transformed itself
  Into a would-be fratricide
This genial landscape leading to the wolds
  Could never be ‘my land’.

Suffolk Essex Border

At last it seemed I’d found a place where life
Would be much more than merely living day
To day: good job, a marriage free from strife
First house bought, a new born to display.
Here we would become staunch partisans
Of Labour Party politics, and swell,
Eventually, the ranks of Ipswich fans,
And camp abroad lured by the solar spell
Of Italy or Spain. But yet, despite
Propitious omens, living in this land
Would bring me more than one unforeseen fright,
Until that day which left me quite unmanned,
As yet a second wife abandoned me.
For whom or why? I was too blind to see.

An Interim, Part One: Judd Street London

Half-chosen, half compelled I left my post
In Suffolk, most improbably locating
  In the Great Wen’s heart.

Here my aspiring better half played out
The spotted play of more than two decades.
  With never a ‘by your leave.’

Succoured by a friend, I wallowed hopeless
As a derelict, until a daughter’s
  Counsel sent me off to Spain.

An Interim, Part Two: Spain

TESOL found me in Spain’s holy town
Where James the saint on his own night conspired
  With chance to change my life for good.

Intoxicated by the fireworks and the crowd
A transatlantic woman’s voice would work
  A wonder I could not shake off.

In fabled Seville months would pass with air born
Words, our vehicle of growing love,
  Till summer consummated it.

Boston, Massachusetts

Viola: What country friends is this?
Sea Captain: This is Illytia lady. (Twelfth Night)

Not shipwrecked did I chance on this
Much vaunted land, nor was I shipped
For sale in sultry markets, fated
  To toil and to be whipped.

Nor was I one of those who fled
Habitual pogroms of a tzar
Or, workless, huddled under decks
  Of liners dubbed White Star.

For once by instinct led, I chose
The path of love laid down in Spain.
Despite misgivings I had naught
  To lose and everything to gain.

On one of Freddie Laker’s planes
I came down to a sunlit land
Dotted with blue of private pools—
  Bland luxuries at hand.

You were busy on the day
I first arrived, so free to roam,
I saw red-breasted birds unlike
  The robins back at home,

And signs that threatened violators
Would be towed, or indicated
Shelters if the BOMB should fall
  And all else be checkmated.

“Is this Illyria lady? “No,
Come with me now to Walden Pond,
And then I’ll show you Rockport’s coast,
And in the night we’ll seal a bond
That makes you more than tourist in my land.”

And so I settled down in this your land:
An ever-changing city, open to the sea
And its attendant coves and islands.
Blest with a late engendered son, our life’s
Barometer erroneously set fair,
We soon became aware of academe’s
Intrigues and had to move, though loath,
Inland, where much was alien to us both.

Evansville, Indiana

‘The Crossroads of America’ the state
Proclaims itself, with all that that entails:
Migrating people north and south, or freight
A-sidling west on former forest trails.
In Evansville the names of streets betray
The origin of some who settled here
Until a war in Europe swept away
Their schools and made a culture disappear,
Or rather almost vanish: for fhe Männechor
Bears witness to Germania and sounds
Out its heritage adding to the store
Of music-making in the city’s bounds,
Where Kindermusik for our son would lead to more,
Much more, than ever we had hoped or bargained for.

The Choice

Lately returned from one more visit to my north
I view the photo of myself improbably
Atop Owd Isaac Ball’s mid forties old steam-roller.

Beyond the show ground, Bowland’s softly curving slopes
Seduce me to a time of schoolboy cycle rides
Through dales and moors and back to well-imagined plains.
My oldest friend drives home through villages and fields.
I glimpse the grammar school in Kirkham, peer down
Wesham’s Garstang Road and see a mother hand
Her son a piece of homemade cake across the wall at playtime.

Such images are more than merely salvage from the past,
Within me, they confirm the Fylde’s my land while life shall last.

Envoi

Even as I choose my childhood’s place
I know that in the garden you lurked there
And only granted me a five-year space
Of blessed ignorance before I’d share
  The deadly knowledge that you bear.