BOOK 1

An old student of mine once told me that, in an introductory science class at university, the lecturer told them all to forget everything they had been told about water.  Even though the human body largely consists of water and our home planet is largely covered in it, water still remains something of mystery to science. How did it get here? Why are its qualities so unusual and paradoxical? Water is a mysterious symbol and agent in most  world religions too, from Taoism to Christianity. 

This poem opened an event on 30 December 2023 with my poetry and Mike Newton’s paintings based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the Creation section Ovid explores the creation of the world and the deities. In the beginning there was Chaos. Light and darkness, land and sea, the heavens and the earth, all mixed together. The separation and ordering of these elements by the unnamed primal deity made life possible. The period of perfect harmony that followed was called the Golden Age. After this came the Silver Age, then the Bronze, then the Iron. We live in the Iron Age.