Time and Direction

‘Where am I going?’

I asked myself one day.

I smiled at this then smiling still said

‘To the grave.’

‘But what will I pass?’ I asked again that day.

‘Oh, this and that’, I thought

For I was thinking now,

‘But nothing much’, I mused.

Then stirring on this point

I sensed that I would greatly miss

So much of life

Unless I thought about it now;

And there I sat,

A long, long time ago.

Written in 18B Prince of Wales Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive, Battersea. May 1984. - This poem was written late one night after falling into a lulled state in which I saw myself as a very old man, on the verge of death. I knew in that moment that I could wish for anything and so I wished to be young again. When I awoke I saw that I was that same old man now young again, and wrote the poem.