Sponds Hill, Cheshire, 26 December 2013

Thirteen years have passed, a dozen and more autumns and springs - in fact thirteen and a half, because then it was summer, a dense day of heat heavy with light, the earth solid and dry, and now it is winter, the year dying back, the earth solid with frost. We've walked up here, from the valley beyond Pott Shrigley, a walk steep but not so far, you reach a ridge after crossing open moorland, the hill falls away, and: there it is - a conurbation. All below me, from the city centre to the suburbs and, in the distance, the hills past its opposite, northern edge. Thirteen years ago I looked down at my city and wrote that all my life was in that view. It wasn't quite true then, and missed out much, but I thought that a poem was the place for the beautiful, oversimplified lie, the bold statement, the powerful wish - and not a vehicle for the complex, intricate uncertainties of actual life as we find it. Now, I look out, and yes, it's beautiful; it reduces a city of millions to a single shape, and aesthetically that still pleases me. I want to still believe that vision is what makes poetry, but I don't. And although I know the way back home I am unsure if I want to return, and leave behind this vision of an earlier, uncluttered self.