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This was written ten years ago. I didnt know then about Adelard's scientific work. I cant revisit my thinking now but this would be before I knew of Heidegger's mangling of Holderlin, and I may have had Holderlin's Swabia in mind. Never does to think small. But I dont know. I have a terrible memory. Lines written for Martin Heidegger 1. Home I come from Coatham Mundeville Deep in the Neville lands of Raby, North of the great Cistercian abbeys of Rievaulx, Jervaulx, Fountains; North of Middleham Castle. The White Horse on the Hambleton Hills is my Southern boundary, I was born in England. Catraeth is close at hand. We lost. A merry summer drinking in Dunedin and then we rode South to death. My friend Aneirin sang it. Another Flodden. At break of day the sun comes out, The fast Tees flows thru green Rokeby, The red ivy clings to Coatham's walls; I am of the Old North. Richard of Gloucester loved our land, It reciprocated in kind. The young days when the Streaks used to head North and South at eleven and three. Green-painted. Sir Nigel Gresley. Mallard. It is a hard grim world laced with Theakston's beer, Peases: The Stockton and Darlington Railway. It is home. The Neville horsemen took England under Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick; the Yorkist Revolution. Plantagenet. The red-coated meet in the drive at Coatham Hall, The hounds, the horses, stirrup-cup. It goes back that far. To the beginning. From the morning to the citadel. The great rock of Durham. Forever. 2. Away Twenty years ago: A silver-grey Ford Cortina southward on the Fosse Way. Ten thousand years since the first settlement at Bath, The triple hot springs of Sulis Minerva deep in the Cotswold forest. The West Country. Down the fire-break to the clearing, A return to the thing itself: Love. In the beginning... A homecoming. A stepping into the light. The magic of existence. The shepherd of Being thrown Into the world on his knees. The land of Wadsworth 6X. Stonehenge and Avebury. Glastonbury Tor. Adelard of Bath, the Benedictine scholar of Arabic. The Summer County: Somerset is the graveyard of ambition. Royal Crescent; The Circus; The Assembly Rooms: Jane Austen was bored to death. The Saxon King Edgar was crowned in Bath Abbey. The Theatre Royal was built to rival London. Arthur won his twelfth victory at Mount Badon. Artorius. Shelley ran two households simultaneously: Mary and Clare. The German bombers came in the Baedeker raids. I walk across the green to the Englishcombe Inn Where the guest beer is the landlord's own selection. Fuller's `London Pride' helps me sleep. It was here that the lady bathed in the fountain. It was here that the books were written. St. Catherine, patron saint of Bath, In astonishment debates me philosophically: `Go back to the beginning And see if it could have been any different.' In astonishment I answer: `It is always different and always the same.' Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: [log in to unmask] Lynx: Poetry from Bath .......... http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html