The Town Moor: escape. We wander through the knee-high grass. What are those birds?, we wonder. What are those flowers? But we have no idea.
The Moor is like the world on the fifth day of creation, we agree – before Adam, before anyone, when everything went unnamed and unredeemed. It needs words, we agree. It needs a poet! Where is the Rilke of Newcastle to sing of the Moor?
I should at least dance, W. says. I should at least do a great Hindu dance of celebration …
Above us, a shore of clouds and then blue sky. – 'That's a weather front', W. says. Which way is it travelling? Where is it heading? And where are we heading, we who are walking beneath it, the shore of clouds?
Is the future open to us, or closed? W. can never decide. Are we making progress, or falling behind. – W. can never decide about that, either.
Alcoholics in the long grass, stretching their limbs and laughing, half-drunk bottles of cider by their ankles. Anyone can walk on the Town Moor, he likes that, W. says. Where the alcoholic can walk, he walks, W. says. And where the alcoholics cannot walk – where his way is barred by security guards or policemen – W. will not walk either.
Shouldn't we lie down in the long grass and drink ourselves to death?, we wonder. Shouldn't we just give up – give up everything – and let death come and find us on the Town Moor? But we consider ourselves to have work to do – that's our idiocy, and our salvation. We actually take ourselves to be busy – that's our imposture and the chance of our survival.
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