8" x 10" C-type prints

I Remember, I Remember

      by Philip Larkin (1954)

Coming up England by a different line 
For once, early in the cold new year, 
We stopped, and, watching men with number plates 
Sprint down the platform to familiar gates, 
"Why, Coventry!" I exclaimed. "I was born here."

I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign 
That this was still the town that had been 'mine' 
So long, but found I wasn't even clear 
Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates 
Were standing, had we annually departed

For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went: 
Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots. 
'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?' 
No, only where my childhood was unspent, 
I wanted to retort, just where I started

​

Coventry, my hometown, navigating memories, visiting places I played as a child. Trees once climbed. Dens once built in the days when our imaginations were uncontainable. To return years later and not feel the uncontrollable excitement I once felt for these unconventionally special places. The diptychs resonate my eternal-presence, and present-absence, from these places that I have come so far away from.