Swan’s Way

Tags

Cotswolds, Inglesham, Oxfordshire, Proust, swan's nest, Swann's Way, Thames path

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart. Oh so Proustian with all the hawthorn too.

‘A Mad, Unreasoning Octopus – what Proust felt about Asthma’

Tags

Alpine spa, asthma, Belladonna, death rattle, Guermantes, lime tea, Meseglise, pharmacology, Proust, revivescences, sanatorium, souffle coup, vagitus

Proust Image: Wikimedia

Yes, everything was inflammatory.

My father blamed my sensibility;

said my symptoms were imaginary.

My mother sighed at my debility,

but did not want to show complicity.

Works as hard as his affliction allows –

my teacher flagged my disability.

Meseglise might tempt with its rural airs;

lilac pollen permeate Illiers;

Guermantes might involve inhaling dust,

or powdered fumigation for its lust.

Caffeine and a mist of belladonna

might immunise from the attractive whores,

coquettes and those almond-eyed madonnas

one pursued, with breathless dedication.

Revivescences were what physicians

ordered: affective disorder cure!

Poisoning my mother’s joy

required expiation and purification.

I recalled aunt’s invalid infusion:

its scent of lime blossom, wafting to me,

unlocking sense of selfhood, combined with

distinctive whiff of pharmacology.

My anxiety about maternal

separation was supposed to have led

to an unconscious conflict of desires –

steamed from me at sanatoriums;

sucked from me at those pristine Alpine spas.

Writing as therapy?  Sublimation

through describing Albertine’s departure?

I found it a dreaded master, but a

faithful servant.  There’s no insulation from

a germ-laden world in cork-lined chambers.

I tried to avoid contamination.

Wheezing asthma is like being chained

to a mad, unreasoning octopus.

Its souffle coup punctuated my prose.

Each virgule was an expectoration.

I wrote eight hundred words in one sentence,

though I disliked the declamatory.

Nothing was going to constrict my flow –

each clause a vesicle to be expelled.

I’d emerge like a pale pupa at night,

morphing into my imaginal state

and the tabacs sold me Cigares de Joy,

my stramonium fix for each attack.

One hopes to have been an inspiration,

even for a thirty five second play,

based on the brief interval we call Life,

between vagitus and the death rattle.

The Last Elephant Apple

Tags

Dillenia indica, elephant apple, Elephas Maximus, Gardeners of Asia, Hamlet, Here I stand, pachyderms

Dillenia indica- the elephant apple tree.  Image Wikimedia

Hamlet said a king could pass through the guts

of a beggar.  Well, I was not prudish.

I was dependent on the pachyderms.

My genes went on elephantine journeys.

They were spread far and wide by these creatures.

They did their business – pat!- while I would pray.

Firstly, of course, they had to eat my fruit.

(Don’t ask me why Elephas Maximus

assisted me and was so efficient too.)

We had a symbiotic arrangement:

if you scratch my back, then I will scratch yours.

Only, I haven’t seen them for five years.

I am hoping that they will not forget.

Their cognitive map used to bring them back;

if it’s true they have all been poached, I’m stuffed.

They would recall when my seeds would ripen.

Humans don’t need them in the way I do,

but, as heavy horticulturalists,

these so-called Gardeners of Asia,

would lumber in a positive fashion:

not pulling down forests permanently,

but merely clearing a space for others.

Now we have Empty Forest Syndrome.

I have to drop my seeds around my base.

Sure, monkeys, rodents, bats and birds oblige,

but my sphere of influence is curtailed.

Here I stand: Dillenia indica,

last of my kind.  I can do no other.

Humankind’s nine billion seeds may not last,

for men don’t follow the ancestral paths;

they don’t see the elephant in the room,

but argue about constituent parts.

As in the fable, they are visionless.

I am the last Elephant Apple tree.

I can teach you about good and evil.

Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry

Tags

charnel house, CSLewis, Headington, Heartsease, Holy Trinity church, Joy, metamorphosis, Oxford, Pharisees, Siamese cat, The Hound of Heaven, The Kilns

The Kilns

• 

• 

• 

• 

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

A gardener gave us brief directions

and we walked to Holy Trinity as

two believers in invisible cats

and curled up comfortably on its wall

was a very tangible companion.

Could this be a descendant of ‘step-cat‘

who ruled The Kilns; dominated the dog?

This was where Jack took his first Communion:

a mouse, finally captured by a cat –

or the quarry of The Hound of Heaven?

He didn’t metamorphose from a dog

immediately and other felines

did not recognise him as kin at first.

‘Cats,’ he said, ‘often don’t like each other;

they can be Pharisees who stare you out.’

‘Men must endure their going hence,’ proclaimed

the grave which nobody was visiting.

I placed two purloined Heartsease on the stone,

under unblinking, eye-slit surveillance

and thought about grey army blanket drapes;

those nicotine-stained ceilings; single beds;

Joy’s introduction of a Siamese.

That church cat was cool.  It was convinced that

its whiskers could pass through a needle’s eye.

Lying in rows, there were sheep and some goats.

Often we don’t have an inkling as to

which is which: we transform at different rates.

Could this have been the cat who comforted

souls in the charnel houses of old?  Or,

could it have been an erstwhile canine?

For this creature’s inscrutability

spoke of divine ineffability.

And all the while, it did not spring away,

but purred me towards an unseen lintel.

I expected gradual disappearance;

maybe some kind of cosmic benison.

But suddenly it was gone and a smile

seemed to hover over the whole graveyard.

I still believe in invisible cats.

He Restoreth My Soul

Tags

Cotswolds, green pastures, Oxfordshire, Psalm 23, weeping willows

…and maketh me to lie down in green pastures

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Samuel Beckett

Tags

acrylics, drama, literary portraits, Samuel Beckett

acrylic painting by Candia Dixon-Stuart (then colourised)

Isolation Poem

Tags

Charles Lamb, Coleridge, imagination, lime tree bower, Nether Stowey, quarantine, Romantic poetry, self-isolation, Wordsworth

This Lime-tree Bower my Prison

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[Addressed to Charles Lamb, of the India House, London]

 

Photo credit: David Ross ; Britain Express.

 

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,

This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost

Beauties and feelings, such as would have been

Most sweet to my remembrance even when age

Had dimm’d mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,

Friends, whom I never more may meet again,

On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,

Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,

To that still roaring dell, of which I told;

The roaring dell, o’erwooded, narrow, deep,

And only speckled by the mid-day sun;

Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock

Flings arching like a bridge;—that branchless ash,

Unsunn’d and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves

Ne’er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,

Fann’d by the water-fall! and there my friends

Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,

That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)

Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge

Of the blue clay-stone.

                                           Now, my friends emerge

Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again

The many-steepled tract magnificent

Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,

With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up

The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles

Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on

In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,

My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined

And hunger’d after Nature, many a year,

In the great City pent, winning thy way

With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain

And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink

Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!

Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,

Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!

Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!

And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend

Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,

Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round

On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem

Less gross than bodily; and of such hues

As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes

Spirits perceive his presence.

                                                        A delight

Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad

As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,

This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark’d

Much that has sooth’d me. Pale beneath the blaze

Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch’d

Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov’d to see

The shadow of the leaf and stem above

Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree

Was richly ting’d, and a deep radiance lay

Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps

Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass

Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

Through the late twilight: and though now the bat

Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,

Yet still the solitary humble-bee

Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know

That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;

No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,

No waste so vacant, but may well employ

Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart

Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes

‘Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,

That we may lift the soul, and contemplate

With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook

Beat its straight path along the dusky air

Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing

(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)

Had cross’d the mighty Orb’s dilated glory,

While thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,

Flew creeking o’er thy head, and had a charm

For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom

No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

Colerige’s friends- Charles Lamb and the Wordsworths- had gone off walking,

leaving him alone at his cottage,as he had had an accident and could not ramble

with them. (His wife had spilled scalding milk on his foot, probably distracted by

having all these literary guests inflicted on her when she was trying to look after

her children!)

He imagines that he is with them and can ‘see’ the terrain they are walking

through.

He is able to travel in his imagination, but also can appreciate Nature at

home.

How true is this for those of us sequestered and quarantined at home.  That is,

for those of us fortunate enough to have gardens.

Good Friday by John Donne

Tags

crucifixion, Good Friday, John Donne, Metaphysical poets, salvation, St Paul’s Cathedral, the cross

John Donne’s monument in St Paul’s Cathedral ( in his shroud)

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

 

By John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other Spheares, by being growne

Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:

Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit

For their first mover, and are whirld by it.

Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.

There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,

And by that setting endlesse day beget;

But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,

Sinne had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for mee.

Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;

What a death were it then to see God dye?

It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,

It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.

Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,

And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?

Could I behold that endlesse height which is

Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,

Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne

By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?

If on these things I durst not looke, durst I

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,

Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus

Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,

They’are present yet unto my memory,

For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,

O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;

I turne my backe to thee, but to receive

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.

O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,

Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,

Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,

That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

 

Exhortation

Tags

exhortation, love thy neighbour, Scottish Makar, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Scottish poet, Ten Commandments, William Dunbar

William Dunbar 15th century Scottish poet. 

Photo by Stephen C Dickson (Wikimedia)

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

 

To God be humble,

to thy friend be kind

and with thy neighbour, gladly lend and borrow;

his chance tonight,

it may be thine tomorrow.

Poem from a Time of Trial

Tags

atheist, blame game, Kipling, natural consequences, Natural Theology, plague, theology

Natural Theology

by Rudyard Kipling

Primitive
I ate my fill of a whale that died
 And stranded after a month at sea.
 .
 .
 .
There is a pain in my inside.
 Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
 Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith :
 Look how the Gods have afflicted me!


 Pagan

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
 Anything more than a harmless flea?.
 .
 .
The burning plague has taken my household.
 Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
 Though they were as good as good could be,
I will out and batter the family priest,
 Because my Gods have afflicted me!


Medi/Eval

My privy and well drain into each other
 After the custom of Christendie.
 .
 .
 .
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
 So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
 Because the Lord has afflicted me.


 Material

I run eight hundred hens to the acre
 They die by dozens mysteriously.
 .
 .
 .
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
 Not to mention the L.
 S.
 D!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
 Because this God has afflicted me!


Progressive

Money spent on an Army or Fleet
 Is homicidal lunacy.
 .
 .
 .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
 Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
 And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
 Because my God has afflicted me.


 Chorus

We had a kettle: we let it leak:
 Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week.
 .
 .
 The bottom is out of the Universe!

Conclusion

This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,
 For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure,
 And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
 Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.
 Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!