Last night I returned to Rowen
And stood before that row of compact cottages
I last visited eighty years ago.
Shimmering in the Welsh sunlight.
With their tightly packed front gardens and outside loos.
My childish mind was ready to welcome the imprint
Of every new marvel of existence.
And now these populate my dreams;
Experience converts to imaginings;
Certainty is transformed as inclination selects
Only what I wish to retain.
Yet recollections of my choosing
Remain uncertainly attached to the broken frame of my memory.
It carries a heavy and invisible load.
A load of echoes and sentiments
That have spun down through all these intervening years
Only now
To present themselves to my remembering mind,
Not as facts;
Not as results;
Not as achievements;
But dressed in all the flavours of those times.
And these echoes and imaginings are now my reality.
I shall never lose them;
They are my life now.