I have been typing up all my poems, regardless of quality, to put them in the computer rather than on hundreds of yellowing scraps of paper. It is a bit bittersweet, like looking through an old photograph album.

I found this this poem Autumn Wood today, which I wrote when I was 19.

It makes me think these things:

• I must have been a strange teenager
• the vaguely mystical, religious, philosophical stuff that preoccupied me then is pretty much the same as now, and that my journey has taken me not far from its starting point
• Walking on Hampstead Heath shortly after my birthday- a horrific 27 years and 3 months ago.

Autumn wood (1978)

There is no stopping the season's wheel
We cling to its rim as best we can
And fear our departure, that centrifugal
Fling out into lifeless dust.
Today it seems the heart
Must make a choice, between plain facts
Or a faith; to choose a new life
Now that death's new rehearsal has begun,
Or to fill the dust with angels
And stare and stare until we touch them.

Now Death's rehearsal has begun
-- there is winter stiff in Autumn's bones --
Now that the loamy air is moistened
And the rotting has begun,
Now an Autumn has come
I'd like a wood to walk in
Where the windy air is crowded
With the leaves the trees have shed
As a bribe to the grey future
Wept in gold.

If I could I'd still the wind
I'd jump an old fence
And scrump a piece of time
Like an apple from an orchard
Perfect to its core;
Then keep it untested, savouring
The guesses at the sweet and bitter
Essence of the thing you possess --
Much better than a cold quiescence
To Winter's oppression.

There is no stopping the season's wheel
I must go, I must make do with moments
Memories of the beginning of belief;
Of evaded choice. I am a true sceptic
And as such I half hope for conversion
Or at least the strength to stay more still
Like those Christians who can winter
Near a hill where the thorns all point
To watch the tip of a human finger
Describe the slow circle of perfection.