Connections

Connections

I remember the excitement of leaving,

an early eighties early morning, 

my eighteen hour odyssey unfolding,

to a college no-one had heard of, somewhere

between Snowdonia and the Irish sea.

The train carries me in the footsteps of Boudicca

through Colchester, where the monstrous 

carbuncle of the Temple of Claudius

came to an ugly end, 

not long after it was built. 

Destroyed by Luddites, who stated

very firmly, with fire (and according

to certain obstinate historians, the sword)

that they wanted none of that modern nonsense

here, thank you very much.

And so to London, where the ashes 

of their arson slowly compacts to coal 

beneath my feet. Two days beforehand,

The Roman Governor had arrived.

His press secretary announced,

following "consultation", that London

could not be defended, alas. Collateral 

damage, which could not be avoided, 

was "and I want to make this clear"

to be blamed on the Celts.

The army, away fighting fanaticism

in cold Cambria, would deal with the revolt

in due course. They would naturally help 

to sweep up the ashes and assist where possible

with the subsequent urban regeneration.

So I stand on a Welsh hillside, overlooking 

the Irish sea, hoping to spot the young Agricola

in among the legions passing beneath 

my feet. I reflect on the european union of men

marching past; Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish,

nineteen hundred years before my birth. 

yet more real to this nineteen year old boy

than my future, today decided, as a Hotel Manager,

and my imminent replanting from one place 

to another, connected by death in A.D. 61.

In the year 2001, the phone rings.

I answer, looking out once more

over soaring Suffolk skies,

my twenty year odyssey over

(in case you're wondering, Penelope didn't wait).

"Hello, it's your mother on the mobile-

we're driving through Colwyn Bay

en route to Anglesey, and I thought of you".

Some connections never go away.

They're just re-made with new energies.