Monday Quote...

...'But at my back I always hear

Times winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity'...

 (from To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell)

Wonderful poem (you can read the full version here), which is basically about a chap trying to persuade a woman to sleep with him using the shortness of life as an argument.  And here's a clip of Damian Lewis reading it (the last verse is missed out though - boo hiss).

Monday Musings...

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!
(Home Thoughts from Abroad, Stanza I, by Robert Browning)

Glorious weather again this weekend, Ben was out in the garden, the cats were being sloths, and Cath and I took it into our heads to try out our new Nordic Walking poles at Bradgate Park.  Oh my!  If you want a good workout whilst going for a walk then this is what you need.  It was like being on a cross-trainer for an hour, although with much better views than you'd ever get at the gym.  We'd both stiffened up so much by the time we got to Starbucks on the way home that Cath was walking like John Wayne.  Oh how we laughed!  Nordic Walking also has the added benefit of making ordinary power walking feel like dancing on air, so we'll be definitely be doing it again.  (Talking of walking... we may be doing another walk for charity in May, this time for Rainbows Children's Hospice, as the half-sister works there as an Events Fundraiser.  What is worrying is that there is a super-hero theme for anyone who wants to dress up for it, and Cath's mind is veering towards Wonder Woman at the moment.).

  

Later on David and I went out for lunch (Nordic Walking gives you a heck of an appetite), and passed some newly erected wind turbines which I had to take a pic of.  They seem so incongruous set against the fields and pastures of rural England, and yet are so awe-inspiring.  The sheer size of them takes the breath away.

On the cat front... Mrs Pod found a filthy piece of string in the garden with a short stick attached to it.  This immediately became an object of desire for her.  Charlie wanted to get involved but was rebuffed (he then sulked and pretended he wasn't interested in it anyway), then Posky came out and started chewing it.  What is it with cats?  They have a basket of toys that they ignore and yet the smallest, most obscure thing can grab their attention for hours.

By the way, if you want to challenge your photography skills try taking a photo of extreme sunshine and shade, especially if a cat is involved!  I tried various exposure modes to get the pics of the cats in the garden - these were the most successful.  We won't talk about the others.

'String Theory - I haz it'.

Mrs P shows how clean her ears are now...

Mrs P and the flowers...

Charlie trying to show how he's not really interested in the piece of string...
it didn't work, we all knew the truth.

Mrs P demonstrating how our lawn needs mowing.

A post for Valentines Day

I don't do Valentines Day... I've always found the whole commercialisation of love thing a bit strange.  But to be seasonal here is a picture of a heart because, well, it was just there, and also two snippets from Wendy Cope's June to December.  Enjoy :O)

Going Too Far

Cuddling the new telephone directory

After I found your name in it

Was going too far.

It's a safe bet you're not hugging a phone book,

Wherever you are.

Spring Onions

Decapitating the spring onions,

She made this mental note:

You can tell it's love, the real thing,

When you dream of slitting his throat.

(From Wendy Cope's Making Cocoa for Kinsley Amis)

ABC Wednesday - X

X is for... a poem called, surprisingly enough, X!  Appropriate for the season in that it mentions Christmas, it is also rather dark, but one of those poems that the more I read it, the more I love it.

X

December that year started out
all right though I knew
my heart could tear easily
as tinsel.

On King Street watching the legless
beggar on wheels I
counted my fortunes.

But what's the use of legs if you're
burdened with a mind
rushing headlong into dark
endings said the shadow

That night exorcising terror I
offered you love you
called me jailor

The season prematurely ended.

Up north Christmas trees
quietly retreated to the
dark forests and the
long awaited baby

never came.

(by Olive Senior)

Olive Senior was born in 1943 in Jamaica, she is a journalist, poet and writer of short stories.

Go to ABC Wednesday for more eXcellent posts!

R is for...

Two of my favourite things, a book and a film.  The first is a book of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy called Rapture, which I was first drawn to by its cover (the hardback version): red board with a silver illustration and writing - truly beautiful.  Rapture is a book of love poems, in fact it is as the description says 'a book-length love poem'. It chronicles a love affair, from the first infatuation and passion to the final separation, and is as beautiful, uplifting and heartbreaking as the process itself.

This is the first poem in the collection:


You

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell,


                                       Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin,
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.


I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms.  You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me


as I open the bedrom door.  The curtains stir.  There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.


And this is the final one:

Over


'That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!'
Robert Browning


I wake to a dark hour out of time, go to the window.
No stars in this black sky, no moon to speak of, no name
or number to the hour, no skelf of light.  I let in air.
The garden's sudden scent's an open grave.
What do I have


                        to help me, without spell or prayer,
endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
the death of love?  Only the other hours -
the air made famous where you stood,
the grand hotel, flushing with light, which blazed us
on the night,


                   the hour it took for you
to make a ring of grass and marry me.  I say your name
again.  It is a key, unlocking all the dark,
so death swings open on its hinge.
I hear a bird being its song,
piercing the hour, to bring first light this Christmas dawn,
a gift, the blush of memory.

My second R is a film called Romuald et Juliette, which I first saw about twenty years ago and which has remained a favourite.  A french romantic comedy, it is the story of Romuald, a wealthy business man with a fabulous lifestyle, but married to a wife who doesn't love him, and with colleagues who are out to get his job.  It is also the story of Juliette, his black cleaning lady, married and divorced five times and living in a cramped apartment with her children.  It tells of how Juliette helps Romuald uncover the dirty goings-on in the yogurt business he runs, how she takes him in, helps him to save his career, but in the end is let down by him in her hour of need.  It is a gem of a film, funny, uplifting and heartwarming.  Can the story end happily with all finding true love and fulfilment?  Of course it can.

For more R words visit ABC Wednesday.



Your help needed urgently
We want to help these two kittties who are facing death by gas chamber - please donate or pass this on - Pogo and Ping Pong!

ABC Wednesday - K is for 'Kubla Khan'

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And here were gardens bright with sinous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills, And folding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place, as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail!
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever,
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.
And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves,
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves;
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw;
It was an Abyssian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome, those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, 'Beware, beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread -
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drank the milk of paradise'.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whilst in an opium-induced sleep, supposedly composed a poem of two or three hundred lines on the subject of Kubla Khan and the palace he commanded to be built.  On awakening he began to write down the poem but was interrupted by 'a person... from Porlock' at the door, and on later trying to resume his writing found that the above fragment was all that he could recollect.  Good excuse!  I love the poem anyway, a series of wonderfully cinematic images that have a visionary feel to them.  Coleridge himself thought the poem 'a psychological curiosity'.

Because today is the 70th Anniverary of the Battle of Britain...

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
 
For a historical account my talented husband has put a blog post together at http://retroairandtrack.blogspot.com/2010/09/spitfire-i-heard-sound-well-before-i.html .

To Autumn...

Let any, who will, still bask in the south

On the paradisal sand,

It's northerly here - and this year of the north

Autumn will be my friend.

 (From Let any, who will, still bask in the south by Elizabeth Akhmatova)

Ah Autumn, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways...  I saw a post about how Autumn was her favourite season on Jag's Fitness Blog and couldn't agree with her more.  So here are some of the reasons why it's my favourite too.

I love how wonderful it is for photography, we still get blue sky but the sun is lower, the light less harsh and the shadows are softer.  Then of course there are the colours: leaves of breathtaking golds, coppers and crimsons, scarlet and purple berries, and vibrant flowers like sedums, rudbeckias and chrysanthemums. 

I like walking on a leafy carpet in woods and seeing horse chestnuts ready to fall, and pinecones and acorns, and squirrels hurrying about their business.  I like the stubble stretching away across the fields.  I love misty mornings when everything is hung with dew, and there is a crispness in the air that foretells of colder days to come.  I like the way that salads disappear in favour of comfort-food, and the fact that the children go back to school so I can walk around the park at lunchtime in relative peace.   I like the fact that summer dresses can be put away and scarves and hats and jackets in rich colours brought out.  I like the way that wonderfully orange pumpkins appear in the shops and make me want to carve a halloween lantern. 

I like it all so much that I have two weeks holiday booked for the beginning of October; I really like that... 

And after a mention of Akhmatova and Barrett-Browning, how could I talk about Autumn without quoting Keats in the same post?

Cue misty images...

And let's not forget

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

(Oh those colours!)

Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

First day of September...

What a perfect, golden, late summer's day it was yesterday.  Sunny but with a hint of coolness in the air - just beautiful.  Whilst at work I decided I would do some gardening when I got home, which in my case usually means the destruction of something, and this time it was the turn of a California Lilac that was getting too unruly (it was almost pulling the fence over as it was so heavy and leaning to one side, and also keeping the other plants below it in constant shade).  With the aid of a hacksaw, gardening gloves, a few choruses of 'I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok',  and four cats who like to get involved with everything, I managed to remove an offending trunk and dragged it to the other side of the garden for D to do something with (I get bored easily and had had enough of it by then).  Pepper especially found it fascinating.  (The cats now have a page of their own on this blog with their biographies and some pics on it).

Pepper and the California Lilac

And this is Pepper blatantly peeping through a spy-hole in the fence

to see what's happening in someone else's garden.  She knows no shame.

As I always think of September (or late September) as the beginning of Autumn I've been reading poetry with an autumnal flavour.  I'll save Keats etc for later but this is one from Geoffrey Hill called September Song.  It's his elegy to a child that died in the concentration camps, and is one of those poems you can't get out of your mind after reading it.  I first read it about eleven years ago and it's stayed with me ever since.

September Song

born 19.6.32 - deported 24.9.42

Undesirable you may have been, untouchable

you were not.  Not forgotten

or passed over at the proper time.

As estimated, you died.  Things marched,

sufficient, to that end.

Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented

terror, so many routine cries.

(I have made

an elegy for myself it

is true)

September fattens on vines.  Roses

flake from the wall.  The smoke

of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.

This is plenty.  This is more than enough.

Although I'm a great believer in letting a poem speak to the reader personally, and taking your own meaning from it, there is an excellent analysis of this poem at Novelguide.

Wet Monday

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky

of this black August.  My sister, the sun,

broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goest to hell; the mountains fume

like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,

she will not rise and turn off the rain.

The wonderful Derek Walcott says it all really, this is a small section of the poem Dark August which was  poem for the day on Saturday (in the book Poem for the Day Two).  Very apt considering what's happening in the world.  On a much lesser scale we also had very bizarre weather yesterday - one minute torrential rain running down the street where I work, the next brilliant sunshine.  D ran outside last night with my camera to snap a photo of a rainbow before it disappeared.  I was in the bathroom using my eyedrops so missed the whole thing!

I did manage to snap a couple of images on my phone at Bradgate Park when out for the weekly cross country.  The first is of the deer - they are absolutely beautiful and are so used to people that they will stand quite close to the path.  The second is just an amazingly large mushroom or toadstool growing in the bracken.