Letting a pilgrimage go

History, whatever it is, maybe Veritas pulled apart by Saturn,

spinning round the present it couldn't contend with,

gradually losing material until one day it'll either be conjecture

or was so slow to leave we never knew it gone

but knew it there once and and strained to

follow the ice and rocks

and dust that left the rings to ramble round East Anglia,

thinking of Bavaria,

of what they left behind in not looking for something else

that might resemble home.

History, obliterated by the present but staying for a while,

watching whilst reflection makes it meaningless makes it come alive again

more than a colourised march to the factory in 1902,

Model Ts years later on Youtube "Driving through the Mission, 1919"  

in highland green,

streets unmarked,

people in the margins moving the same as us, 

their clothes starchier though,

off to dip their pens in their inkwells to think

my school desk, the black hole where the inkwell once went,

full of wood chips instead from where someone else has

pen knifed a swastika on the fifth attempt, someone else

has absently filled that in with biro thinking about Weimar 

and its essay due in a week thinking about break-time

and his tie flapping behind his head chasing a football

braving tetanus round the rusty bike stands where it will fall,

I would never be home there though it's an orbit

along with the things that I did that I hope will rain down on me

or just go off somewhere, into space.