Green Belt

Tags

Flemish miniatures, green belt, house building

(Biblioteque Nationale? Flemish miniature. Image from Karl Steel’s blog)

 

Never mind

the Green Belt – we need

more houses.

Diesel Recall

Tags

Bodleian, diesel, Douce, re-call, Venus, Volkswagen

 

 

(Venus Rides her Chariot: bodl_Douce 195; orig

uploaded by Tony Harrison)

 

Volkswagen

managed to adapt

their diesels.

The Coal Man

Tags

Baba Yaga, babuschka, briquettes, Chekov, coal man, Vulcan, woodburner

An old post which seemed to bypass most of my present followers:

It’s dark now that the clocks are about to be changed and in the evening

all one can think about is activating the wood burner and settling in with

the hope that something interesting will be on the television.  I go out

scavenging for wood- from skips, with permission, -or just appropriating

blown down twigs and slender branches.  After a walk I look like a

babuschka trundling home in a Chekhov landscape, or Babuschka Baba

Yaga, to be more precise.

When I was little I was unfamiliar with the concept of a  wood burner, but

very au fait with the actuality of a coal fire.  Here is a poem that I wrote

about:

The Coal Man

 

Once a week the coal man called with his sack

of bulging hessian, a shouldered sheep

wrapped round his sooty neck, his black back

bent double.  He left a glistening heap

in bunkers, bawled on like a hoarse banshee.

Peeping from behind the curtain, my eye

would meet his own and in childish fancy,

its balefulness predestined that I’d die,

cursed by the red-lipped  golliwog’s* fixed stare.

His load was the object of poker, tongs,

its coke-corrupted, crackling dross the flare

of a chimney fire; feeling which belongs

with hearth mythology, childhood’s subtle

fears of elemental forces.  The guard

was prohibition’s symbol; the scuttle

source of adult power to ignite flames barred

to the uninitiated.  Daybreak

began with vestal rituals, the sweeping

of ash, its careful wrapping.  I would wake

to a smoky haze, the first blue leaping

through yesterday’s newspapers.  A stray spark

had to be stamped before it took its hold:

individuality’s searing mark,

product of the dark trolls, Vulcanesque gold.

God took His own delivery; the sky

rumbled as His cellar filled with tinder

and this child, captivated by a lie,

trembled.  The Coal Man might note smut, cinder

in grimy heart of smallest sinner-a

companion set no talisman or charm

against His briquettes’ out-poured brouhaha,

or sudden brilliancy which caused alarm.

The Grimy Giant’s voice was the thunderclap

Which sent one to the haven of a lap.

 

* no longer PC, but in the Fifties many a child had

a golliwog, so this toy, held in affection, was of its time

and that was its name, whether one approves of it, or not

in present times.

 

( PS Beware of burning wood unless it is super-dry oak

which has been seasoned for two years and has been

properly stored.  I was exposed to bituminous, evil-smelling

smoke from others’ chimneys and my lung function in

my lower airways deteriorated to 56% and steroids did not

really help. Had to move house in the end.  Wood smoke

particulate is highly toxic.)

Chalk Hill Blues

Tags

Chalk Hill Blues, Compton Down, damselflies, dongas, dragonflies, fritillaries, plague, St Catherine's Hill, Venetian glass, William Rufus

 

An old one, but worth a re-run maybe?

(Male Chalk Hill Blue, photographed on 2/8/008

by Rosenzweig)

CHALK HILL BLUES

Fine dongas’ etched capillaries

trace downs in criss-cross engravature.

In pure air, flimsy with fritillaries,

Chalk Hill Blues, by divine imprimatur,

caper.  Deft dragonflies, volts from the blue:

thoraxes like mottled Venetian glass,

hover, with pink damselflies, over dew-

dipped vegetation.  Those who would pass

by to reach St Catherine’s coronet (beech

circle)- Iron Age travellers, or those

who buried their plague victims- did not breach

Nature’s contract; nor did those who opposed

that livid, open wound, scarring the cant,

observable from Compton Down.  This way,

once pilgrim path, in earshot of thin chant

from cloisters, now roars, a snarling highway,

bar of shame on history’s escutcheon.

Rufus’ cartwheels no longer rut clay;

but his blood badges the route to destruction.

 

(Death of William Rufus by Neuville)

Ode to Autumn

Tags

bonfire smoke, car emissions, depression, Keats, lama, leaves on the line, light box, llama, Ode to Autumn, St Crispin's Day, stalactites, Wolford tights

St Crispin’s Day, sighed Brassie, my close-bosom friend.

The nights are drawing in. This weekend we change the clocks,

don’t we?  Which way?

Fall back; Spring forward, I reminded her.

(She can never remember in which direction to adjust her timekeepers.)

Think about it like this: tights down. Tights, as in stalactites.  My teacher said

they hung down.  But people are hanged. She also recited: One ‘l’ lama he’s a

priest; two ‘l’ llama he’s a priest, but you can bet your silk pyjama, there isn’t

any three ‘l’ lllama.

Why should tights hang down?  Wolford ones don’t. And shouldn’t it have

been ‘pyjamas’? remarked Brassie.  Anyway, what are you

talking about?

Just deliberating on my life and how it has fallen into the sere..

You sound a bit depressed, she stated bluntly.

I can’t help the pathetic fallacy of the season.  Keats was too upbeat in my

opinion.

I wouldn’t exactly have called him a glass half full kind of guy, objected

Brassie.

Suppose he had written about Autumn thus, I volunteered, pushing a

sheet of A4 in her direction.

THE FALL

Season of fogs, mouldy putrefaction,

enemy of the geriatric sun,

bringing depression, dissatisfaction,

blasting the mildewed fruit trees, one by one;

tainting blackberries with lead pollution,

eroding limestone buildings as the air

saturates with sulphuric solution.

Emissions from cars, whose owners don’t care

make children’s lungs bloat as they breathe exhaust

fumes more deadly than poppy opiates:

an inspiration of enormous cost-

harvest to be garnered at future dates.

Who has not seen them oft amid their stores,

stockpiling for Christmas, demented folk?

Those raking rotting leaves: of garden chores

the most thankless.  Resulting bonfire smoke

irritating neighbours, whose dank washing

is ash-specked.  Home-brew enthusiasts start

ineffectual sterilising, squashing

of elderberries….It’s then their wives depart

for evenings out, to let men watch the ooze;

they do lotteries with syndicate friends,

hoping for windfalls; drinking decent booze.

Who hears the songs of Spring?  It all depends

to what you are attuned.  If you have kids,

you’ll hear the first whine of the Christmas list,

as children’s advertising makes its bids-

o’erwhelming, so no parent can resist

its importunities.  The dismal rain

fills gutters blocked by aforementioned leaves,

which de-rail, or delay the British train,

which sceptical commuter scarce believes.

Cold, full-grown lambs may bleat from hilly bourn,

outwith the fold, or a housing bubble.

Reaped fields disappear; crops, livestock we mourn.

Winnowing is gone- designer stubble

the only razing we can recognise.

Clearly Men and Nature are out of synch.

Seasonal disorders rise.

If Keats were here, whatever would he think?

I think that is SAD, said Brassie.

Sad?

Yes, the product of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Go and get a light

box!

Very helpful.  If the Romantics had been persuaded to get a light box,

we wouldn’t have had all that marvellous poetry.

Interesting subject for a dissertation.

Well, why don’t you write it, instead of all that drivel?

Because we might not be amused. How much are light boxes, anyway?

(re-blog from 2013)