Prehistory

We lingered in prehistory
because we liked it.
It suited us to let the days
slip by unchronicled,
while in our woods, uncatalogued,
wonders could walk unchallenged.

And then the Word arrived
with its clerks and secretaries,
all scribbling furiously,
demanding credos, oaths and testimonials,
finding us out in our oak-wreathed haunts
and taking everything down.

David Callin

David Callin is a poet from the Isle of Man. He writes: The Nab is the name of the farm where I grew up, with my sister, in the sixties. It was a farm on a hill, so a farm with a view. "From the Nab" is a collection of poems that are all about, one way or another, this island in the middle of the Irish Sea: history, topography, folklore and autobiography (mine).  I've lived here all my life, apart from a brief - too brief, really - escape in the eighties. These poems consider the island's heritage, from prehistory onwards.

If you have any thoughts about this poem or this publication,  David Callin   would be pleased to hear them