26 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in History, Literature, Nature, Personal, Poetry, Psychology, Social Comment
Photo of kanji by Jmettlen on Wikimedia Commons
Even our friends’ graves
will one day be ploughed over.
Grief diminishes
through time and we smile once more.
Calligraphy on
headstones will be eroded.
The deceased’s peers die;
his name is then forgotten.
The pines which are deemed to live
for a thousand years
are, in actual fact, chopped down –
disrespectfully,
or just pragmatically,
according to how life’s viewed.
12 Tuesday Nov 2019
Posted in Bible, History, Personal, Photography, Poetry, Relationships, Religion, Writing
Tags
Anne Boleyn, Benjamin, Cirencester, communion chalice, Dissolution of Abbeys, fan vaulting, farthingale, Gethsemane, Henry VIII, Herod, Salome, St John the Baptist church, wool church, Woolsack
(Anne Boleyn’s Communion chalice, donated by Elizabeth I’s physician,
is displayed in a niche in the above.)
Had her head been brought in on a platter,
she might have seen a vaulted porch, with veins
like gills, or fine tracery of brocade;
or diagrams of a nervous system;
or skeletal frames of hooped farthingales.
That narrow windpipe staircase on the right,
constricted as her white, extended throat,
might have reminded her of a Tower
and the futility of counting steps.
This holy place was built on virgin wool.
It was a fold for sheep, who stood before
shearers and then were led to swift slaughter.
Here is a wine glass pulpit, slim as waists,
pre-gravid: a stem for those who could grasp.
A Lamb prayed such a cup would pass from Him,
but had to drink it to the bitter dregs
and she had her Gethsemane as well.
Benjamin, caught with a stolen vessel,
was offered clemency – but she had none.
Her gilt chalice, though charged with sacred blood,
conferred no immunity, nor did it
prevent Dissolution of the Abbey.
Criticism of a current favourite
did John the Baptist no favours either.
But the dancer in Herod’s court was sly –
perhaps more so than this sloe-eyed woman,
who ultimately was beheaded too.
May, the traditional time for losing
one’s heart to one’s love, was a nuptial month,
but also a month of execution.
Cherry tree confetti in the graveyard,
proleptic of this afternoon’s wedding,
has already been bruised and downtrodden.
You may sit on a Woolsack, or a throne,
and gain the whole world, or lose your own head.
(The engraved acanthus decoration
evokes immortality; lineage.
Though its thorny leaves speak of sin and pain,
it was an apt gift to a physician,
from the grateful daughter of Anne Boleyn.)
24 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Environment, Literature, Nature, Nostalgia, Personal, Photography, Poetry, Summer
hath all too short a day.
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart. Words by Shakespeare – sort of…
04 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in Celebrities, History, Music, Nostalgia, Personal, Poetry, Social Comment
It was an entirely fortuitous and serendipitous encounter. Major Howard was
sitting at a table outside Arlette Gondree’s cafe. (Arlette’s house was the first
French home to be liberated.)
I was in the company of Major Michael Hickey, a military historian who
was with my choir. We were singing The Brahms Requiem seven times
in ten days, all over Normandy, along with a French choir and the
orchestra of Basse Normandie. We sang in different towns
and we sang in German. The audiences were in tears. It was an
emotional and healing experience for all involved.
Photo: 9th June, 1944. Wikimedia Commons
Pegasus Bridge
Generous gesture – German flag festoons,
hoisted with the Allied banners. Bunching,
fussy boudoir blinds. Here swooping platoons,
like death’s head moths, stealthily came gliding.
Across the bridge John Howard bravely strode,
piper ahead, deflecting sniper shot.
Now European coaches block the road;
the dispassionate stamp postcards they’ve bought,
sending snapshots of Hell to those who knew
the mark of Caen first-hand. Wish you were here!
He was: a fact to startle and imbue
those that have eyes to see and ears to hear.
The café’s bright umbrellas shelter all
from noonday’s heat, so one could fail to spot
cool nonagenarian. By the wall,
hero’s crutches propped, ready for action.
His longest day is past; his time now short:
German beer his major satisfaction.
31 Friday May 2019
Posted in Community, History, Literature, Nature, Nostalgia, Poetry, Social Comment, Writing
Tags
Adlestrop, chicory, Edward Thomas, Evenlode, Gloucestershire, Jane Austen, Napoleonic Wars, Syrian refugees, wistaria
Adlestrop Church
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart
The Post Office is closed; a flyer pokes
out of a letter-box; thin rivulet
trickles down a bridleway, aiming for
the Evenlode. A profusion of blue
chicory shivers in the breeze. The church,
sanctified by its topiary cross –
reminiscent of Jane Austen’s necklet
which she wore as she left the rectory
on merciful missions to village poor –
stood firm during Napoleonic Wars.
Its roof vault is as azure as that sky
the poet contemplated on his brief halt,
when his depression lifted on hearing
birdsong, which trilled above the hiss of steam.
From trenches, could he see that cloudless square?
When someone failed to set the station clock,
did Time itself revolt at what would come?
Could we also be on the brink of war?
Yet pale Wisteria seems to conquer
fear and heraldic tulips blazon hope.
A yellow poster in the bus shelter
promises that all money raised
from a talk on Edward Thomas will fund
Syrian refugees – will help those ‘wontedly,‘
or wantonly, driven out of their homes.
Who will attend? Some wealthy weekenders?
Thomas never actually made it here,
although his spirit is ubiquitous.
Pervasive silence invites us to pause,
in the name of Poetry and Beauty,
before all clocks are permanently stopped
and there are no more birds in Gloucestershire.
28 Tuesday May 2019
Posted in Arts, gardens, Home, Horticulture, Nature, Nostalgia, Personal, Photography, Poetry, Writing
Quotation: Gertrude Stein, from the poem Sacred Emily
Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart
03 Friday May 2019
Posted in Architecture, Environment, Horticulture, Nature, Nostalgia, Personal, Photography, Poetry, Sculpture
Yesterday at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire
Reference to Andrew Marvell poem
Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart.
All Rights Reserved
03 Wednesday Apr 2019
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart
I think that I shall never see
a poem lovely as a tree…
a tree that looks at God all day,
and lifts her leafy arms to pray…
Upon whose bosom snow has lain
who intimately lives with rain…
Poems are made by fools like me
but only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer (1886-1914)
Posted by Candia | Filed under Environment, Nature, Personal, Photography, Poetry
30 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in art, Environment, Literature, Nature, Personal, Poetry
I chose the path less travelled and that made all the difference.
Acrylics by Candia Dixon-Stuart
21 Thursday Mar 2019
