Imagine it a ruin. / A spot-lit arch. Its towers / Toppled. The river / Kerving a jud / / In the fading light / At the thin end of the year. / Though its countless sockets / Hold a darkness – ours – / / In Elvet, North Bailey, / Cobbled Owengate, / Rising, fugitive / As coal smoke on...

Not so bad to belong / To the deepest strata, / Or to share with the oldest rock / The colour of its armour, / / To burrow in ware-stink / And salty tangle, / Or to sleep in the jewel-box sand / Among its stars and spirals / / Millennia. Not so / Terrible, to fuel / The migration of mi...