21 Sunday Apr 2019
Thoughts and prayers for all affected by the Sri Lankan attack earlier today. Our happiness is mingled with grief and outrage at the inhumane treatment of our fellow human beings. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do…
Photo by Candia
Posted by Candia | Filed under Community, News, Personal, Photography, Religion, Social Comment
07 Sunday Apr 2019
Posted in Music, News, Personal, Photography, Social Comment
Tags
Off home now after drowning out the Brahms Cello Sonata in the local
Cotswolds church…
21 Thursday Mar 2019
06 Wednesday Mar 2019
Posted in Celebrities, Humour, News, Photography, Politics, Satire
as seen in an Oxford shop window today!
Photos by Candia
04 Sunday Nov 2018
Tags
autorotation, Beaumont Hamel, Bois des Fourcaux, Bois l'Eveque, calvaire, Cambrai, Craiglockhart, del Gesu, Delville Wood, Dufay, dunnock, Hamel, Hebuterne, Last Tree, lynchet, Mametz, mandrake, Maricourt, Napier University, Ors, Queen's Hall, remblais, Sassoon, Somme, Steve Burnett, sycamore, The Branch, Wilfred Owen, World War 1 poetry
A re-blog:
A friend told me about an amazing radio programme about Steve Burnett,
in Edinburgh, making a Wilfred Owen violin from a fallen branch from a
sycamore tree from Craiglockhart Hospital, now Napier University,where
Sassoon and Owen met and discussed their poetry, before Owen
returned to the trenches and met his untimely death.
I listened to the programme and then felt compelled to write the
following piece:
The Sycamore Sings
Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul…
(amended words from his poetry on Wilfred Owen’s gravestone)
Where a mother muted her offspring’s ire,
deleting his line’s interrogative;
where Dufay scored his music at Cambrai;
St Quentin’s corpse loomed from the Somme marshland,
to hallow the grandest basilica;
where guillotines did their grisly work,
fog lifted from shattered Bois l’Eveque-
new dawn drawing back night’s curtain of war.
On a towpath, a twenty five year old,
tried not to fret how he would cross the bridge.
Mesmerised by the autorotation
of seeds, he foresaw his own slow spiral,
where magpies croaked in blasted canopies.
Dark, stark poplars had been lopped long before;
the copses razed; the rides and lynchets scarred.
Mametz, Maricourt and Bois des Fourcaux:
sweet chestnut, lime, beech, hazel, oak, hornbeam-
mad mandrakes uprooted; bi-furcated trunks.
Sad remblais of Hebuterne (No Man’s Land)
absorbed shrill batteries near sunken lanes.
Calvaires bowed before continuous suffering.
In Beaumont Hamel, a single tree remains,
petrified. In Delville Wood, The Last Tree
stands like a gibbet. Sycamores survive.
They grow where other trees give up the ghost.
One such, at Craiglockhart, he could recall.
Again he heard the dunnock’s douce refrain,
singing for dear life, from lush foliage,
before its notes were silenced, once for all.
Fragments of father’s sermon rose to mind-
about The Branch, hope, regeneration.
Now, while still green, a supple slice is bent
into a tongue which will tell of all loss,
tears oozing like resin from a wounded bark:
man and nature in divine harmony.
In Queen’s Hall, it will sob and it will sing
of the pity of war – the air fleshily weeping.
And, one being dead, yet will be speaking
through a universal language of peace,
from a pattern once conceived by Gesu.
11 Wednesday Jul 2018
Posted in Celebrities, History, News, Photography, Sport, Summer, Tennis
Tags
Practising his serve. Obviously paid off!
Photos candiacomesclean.wordpress.com
20 Wednesday Jun 2018
Tags
acrylic, Art Nouveau, charcoal, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, emulsion, Glasgow School of Art, pastel
Posted by Candia | Filed under Architecture, art, Arts, Community, Media, News, Social Comment
24 Saturday Mar 2018
Tags
collage, found objects, poisoning, Salisbury, Skripal, spy, subliminal, trefoil radiation symbol
I have never noticed that there is a kind of ionising radiation
trefoil symbol on one of the buildings in the roofscape. Unintentional,
I’m sure. In line with ‘found objects’ and the subliminal, I only saw it after
I had pasted it on!
19 Monday Mar 2018
Don’t ask me ‘Why?’ No one asked Robert Rauschenberg
that question…. Did they?
09 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Community, Crime, Education, News, Poetry, Psychology, Relationships, Religion, Satire, Social Comment, Writing
Tags
AA, antidote, Audi, Chinos, do-gooding, Hazmat, neighbourliness, nerve agent, rogue state, Samaritan, sestina
The lawyer asked Him: Who is my neighbour?
He said, I’ll offer moral assistance.
Nowadays you’re out at work and ignore
those who live opposite, or alongside.
One day you spot someone in a bad state,
lying in their drive, but you’re in a rush.
Lawyer:
I’m late to pick the kids up, so must rush.
It’s bound to be dealt with by a neighbour,
so I’ll spring into my Audi estate.
That nosy woman will give assistance –
the one who draws her curtains to one side.
A chance for do-gooding, she won’t ignore.
I should ring up the police, but just ignore
those dodgy callers, who seemed in a rush
and annoyed me by parking on my side:
too many visitors for one neighbour!
They doubtless gave him hefty assistance
with his mortgage. (He comes from a rogue state.)
Him:
You’ve claimed you’re public-spirited, but state
your character through your actions; ignore
the twitching corpse in his drive. Assistance!
Who helped to dig you out when in a rush?
Lawyer:
It was the man from the AA. Neighbour?
Getting involved can just be suicide.
And, if I go over and kneel beside
this loser; feel his pulse, what kind of state
will my Chinos end up in? This ‘neighbour’
could contaminate me; I should ignore
his plight. A family man’s in no rush
to inhale nerve agents. Police assistance –
or, perhaps paramedic assistance…
they’ll have Hazmats and antidotes beside.
Where angels fear to tread they’re known to rush.
Samaritans don’t live on this estate!
Him:
So, walk on by is what you’ll do; ignore
the parlous condition of your neighbour?
Lawyer:
Rush to his side? No, not for one’s neighbour.
To ignore the perils of assistance
is for citizens of another state.
