WHEAL DREAMING...
When I am rich beyond the dreams of avarice, I shall buy a house on the North Atlanic coast of Cornwall, preferably near the village of Zennor. There is something only reluctantly of England about this part of the British Isles; it is in most respects verry distinctly somewhere else. Although the Cornish language died out in the 18th century determined efforts have been made to restore it. There is even an active, indeed, lively, Cornish nationalist party, Mebyon Kernow.
Englandís only real historical stake in Cornwall was tin mining. The heyday of Cornish tin mining was between the 1840s & 1860s ñ a time of massive industrial growth in Britain as a whole. But recessions & diversification in the use of metals laid the industry low & the last working tin mines closed in the late 20th century.
The mines were all known by the prefixed proper noun ëWhealí, from the Cornish word for mine working, ëwhelí. These dark & dangerous places often bore romantic names ñ Wheal Jane, Wheal Martyn, Wheal Henrietta.
In the pretty coastal town of St Ives there is a tiny lane called Wheal Dream. Captivated by the name, I imagined it to be on the site of a long-forgotten tin mine. I speculated on its fate in a poem.
WHEAL DREAM
So I shall build it here
to rest upon and pierce
to the core this,
the old world. I claim
the seams of tin,
the springs loaded
inside rock. My drills,
my hammers will release
their tension and I
shall be known
by the hard-drawn smoke
that, rising, wires
my stone-dream
to the sky.
Tinmaster.
And my dream
shall falter in
a world that moves
too fast. And I
shall dwindle too.
My name will rust;
my span of arms
outstretched would bridge
the tiny artery
of the lane
they have named
Wheal Dream.
12:10:25 AM 
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