I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,

the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.

Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train's wet glass,

will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards

of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids
heavy with sleep, to the city's green edge.

--- Sue Hubbard, 'Eurydice'

Without elaboration, today, I learnt that not all things are always lost, and not all people always forgotten.

For a long time, London has felt like a faceless fabric with occasional glimmering pinpricks of light. Sometimes, her lush and rich history overwhelms and overawes me; I take buses down past normal, slightly discrepit buildings, and spot through the dirtied rain smudged window a plaque confirming its existence as of 1908, and sit back, astounded, I walk down the Strand and feel like my eyes are too small for the grandiose view before me.

Sometimes, her alien nature befuddles me; I walk down my corridor to my room, hear doors slamming sharply on floors above mine, and have never felt smaller; I listen to the raucous cheers and bawdy songs outside my window, and know that I am not like them, and wonder if there will be anyone like me.

And sometimes, just sometimes, she surprises me, and reassures me.

Today, I rediscovered a long-lost friend from almost beyond time, from a time before England had receded into the background of my life, from a time when I had uniforms for separate seasons and was the youngest person at the Leavers' Tea, and came to the realisation that while not all things change, and not all things stay the same, some things still retain enough of their original semblance to strike a familiar chord.

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