The Leonids

My Year  12s and I just got to the end of Hamlet, extraordinarily wonderful – as always! Images of such power and sorrow in the final act. And reading Hamlet’s words about defying augury in November just makes one think of the Leonids (doesn’t it?) and the power humans have so often given the stars over their lives – whether in the portentous flight of comets, the more mundane weekly/monthly astrology or the simple small promises of trust in divine providence. None of it very reliable, of course, but fruitful – perhaps.

Leonids

… the wandering stars … stand
like wonder-wounded hearers

Hamlet V i

 

earlier nightfall

rubs out

the differences of place

makes all

familiar dark

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Earth in measured dance

towards the Kuiper Belt again

erases years

until the shooting light

once more spills belief

in providence

smaller than the portents

of 906, 1630, 1833

but still as radiant

and full of seeming promise

inviting wishes

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the shower ends

and heaven hung with black

is vast and space again

where cast off

rocks and dust and ice

-          indifferent wake of passing comets    -

flare briefly

into wonder

<>

till the wounds

of time and space

return

 

 

 

the very flame of love

It sounds enchanting doesn’t it – the very flame of love; but it is Claudius speaking and the full quotation is: ‘There lives within the very flame of love/a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it’. Which is much less cheerful. In a similar way (to my mind anyway) I have been possessed for a while by an image from Elizabeth Bishop – of snow not dissolving on the sea from her Imaginary Iceberg. Somehow from the marriage of these two emerged this (with some Antony and Cleopatra as well as Othello thrown in):

 

The very flame of love

We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship

Elizabeth Bishop

 

 

to see a cloud that’s

dragonish – a blazing glory

in an evening sky

was to mistake you

for an iceberg

when only snow

lay on the sea

brief fractals sinking

melting invisibly

into the liquid salt

<>

no winking crystals

in the restless swell

to break the light

or to preserve

the untouched alps

rising from the

fleet monstrous deep

as chaos comes again

 

 

The strange world of Ofsted

The long awaited inspection finally came – on the last two days of term. This seemed a particularly cruel way to go about it and makes one suspect the motivation behind all this to be less than supportive – unless of course they are simply uncaring and unaware of the rhythms of a school term, which also would be criminal!

Anyway – I have also had reason to think again a lot about Louis MacNeice’s Prayer before Birth and the tone seemed appropriate to the situation:

 

prayer before Ofsted

 

they have not yet arrived

let not the queen’s tall servants come near mind

 

i fear that HMI may with their targets shoot mind

with observations quell mind

with missed judgements rule against mind

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let them not forbid

lessons tangential  winged -

full of discoveries in thoughts unlisted

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forgive mind the compromises she will make

with their quantified take

on the ineffable mystery

which they carelessly bury

beneath the fake, the PC,

the bureaucratic  weight

of their need to slake

their need to control

the possibilities

of wonder and despair

<>

may mind refuse to rehearse

their lessons, their parts, their cues

their crushing plans, initiatives –

thinly disguised rules

for quiescence lulled

by the flimsy markets of variety

where mind dims

a little more

each day

<>

let not the merciless midges of measurement

damn mind to passive mediocrity

with the last feeble twitches of a social conscience

choking on satisfactory hypocrisy

which frees the heart for selfishness

arse covered by risks assessed and targets met

 

<>

let not mind turn

murmur-less to dust

 

 

Appling

There is no-one else I can blame for this one – only lots of poems about apples and a long discussion about them at a Stanza meeting and those inevitably strange grammar lessons, where somehow one always ends up asking a child to’ apple’ in the time-honoured way of testing for verb-status or not. It is not often that a child promptly responds by ‘appling’ – with some grace, too. I shall remain always grateful to her – despite this:

Appling-time

 

Outside trees turn

appling cheeks

into the slanting light

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round and rich

before leaves fall

in brittle splendour

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briefly appling

thinning shadows to

abundance

<>

till wind heaps

their ragged skeletons

in deserted corners

 

<>

<>

Inside minds might apple

filling, rounding, stretching

the circumference

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boundaries of knowledge

rounding with a rich curving full

of thoughts

<>

or does school

lead to appling of a

different sort

<>

like squirrel’s cheeks

appling above quick and furtive paws

eyes without pause alert

for loss

 

 

Apples

I did not know there was such a thing as Apple day – which has on events calendars become almost an apple month. This seems both quaint and delightful, as does the apple to me now. Its vast variety (and yes, I do mean vast – try googling it) and its wonderful story – beginning in Asia, most probably, and moving via Greece and the Hesperides to Avalon to sauce. Apples and roses are cousins and like their flower relations they have been seen as gifts of love in their time as well as the biblical temptation and blighting knowledge.

Anyway – they have been enormous fun to write about (still with an eye on the Imagists)

Apple palimpsest

an apple tree’s a

tall white shadow in the spring

whispered inkling of

almost  Avalon

<>

now spills abundant apples

on the lawn

small and crumpled

bruised stung tart

five carpel heart-star

<>

cousin to the rose

offspring of the

golden immortality

of Aphrodite

<>

that you tossed me once

so tenderly arc apple beautiful

consummate player

<>

snow should hesitate

as robins do

around the last apple

with-held from bobbing fair and cider

to hang alone

in winter branches

song and dance stilled

<>

prayer and gift

that playful gods

might not forget

the next round

and the next

tiny exuberance

having utterly failed to get on with Lowell or Gertrude Stein (tracing back lines from E. E. Cummings) I turned to H.D. and other Imagists. All I can say is, I understood them better, though Lowell was among them. Also I did really find the sparrows a relief from splendour in Venice:

the sparrows of Venice

after the deafening glory

of  the piazza – doves

glaring marble

on dark stone

at the dirty foot of a

dripping drinking fountain

small brown birds

splinter a

tiny exuberance

radiance

lighter than brightness

without a single splash

Calendar

Have been reading too much that is contradictory, perhaps, to find an emulation this week. Gertrude Stein – who remains a puzzle so far, Amy Lowell’s bejewelled sentiment and Elizabeth Bishop’s restraint and attention. And as if that were not enough have been exploring English local culture – to find gems such as the Devil’s Nutting Day, which is either on Holy Cross Day (14 September) or on St Michael’s day (21 September)- either way not a good idea, apparently, to go out nutting then. He might be there.

Somehow – and perhaps predictably  - this came to be associated with girls ‘falling’  pregnant on nutting days and so the old encounter with sin for women once again is sex.  And would the devil – according to legend he is disguised as a gentleman (does that mean a plummy voice or beautiful manners, I went for both) – not be lovable? Certainly more fun, perhaps than solemn mass?

In Warwickshire, the story goes on, the nutting devil bumped into the Virgin, dropped his bag of nuts in surprise and fled  - there is a hill to prove it.

The Devil’s Nutting Day

they’re wearing red in town for Holy Rood

and chant the exultation

(the dark year drawing in)

keeping the devil at bay

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but would you know him

if you wandered into legend

and met the Lord of Darkness nutting

<>

he’d be a gentleman they say

with branch-catching eloquent hands

for your ease

and hazel eyes spinning talewebs

a voice like amethyst song

of wonderthings you did not know

and stepping so lightly beside you

you did not see the grass

burn radiant white to ash

beneath his uneven tread

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and if you did – would you turn home

<>

then when you came to rest beside the water

silver mottled grey

would you dare eat the nuts he picked

or let him take your arm

gasp at that touch

and want it more

naked beneath

the embershadow of his wings

would you refrain

when all about

bells ring his exile once again

<>

and when stumbling you awake

to his spilled banished nuts alone

will there grow

like an old tear not mending

a hill of yearning absence