Sacred Texts from The Weston Library

Tags

Oxford exhibition, sacred texts, Weston Library

a recent exhibition at The Weston Library, Oxford.

St John the Baptist, Cirencester

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.)

 

 

 

Adlestrop, Easter 2017.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

A rose is a rose is a rose…

Tags

a rose is a rose is a rose, Gertrude Stein, rose, Sacred Emily

 

Quotation:  Gertrude Stein, from the poem Sacred Emily

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

A Clerihew For Our Times

Tags

Beckett, clerihew, Mrs May

Oh, Mrs May,

what are we to do when there’s only one day

left, until we’re floundering,

jusqu’aux cous in merde; unable to sing?

 

 

Snowdrop Quennet for Candlemas

Tags

Candlemas, quennet, snowdrops

Candlemas Bells     White Purification    Snow Piercers

Milk Flowers

Naked Maidens       Good Christians        Ice Lilies

Mary’s Tapers

February Fairmaids     White tears         Death Flowers

Eve’s Comforters

Morning Stars

Pentecost Flowers

Mary’s Teeth

Dewdrops

Shrove Tuesday Fools

Flowers of Hope

Dingle-Dangles

Snow Bells          Eve’s Tears       Mary’s Tears

Candlemas Lilies

 

 

c Photo and poem by Candia Dixon-Stuart

 

 

 

 

The Man Who Threaded Words

Tags

boteh, braes, Burns, Caledonia, cloths of Heaven, dragon's teeth, Ferguslie, Mount Olympus, Paisley, peesweeps, Robert Tannahill, Scottish poets, Skylarks, weaver poet, Woodside

 

The man who threaded words together, like

silk yarns in a Paisley shawl, showed respect

for his woven jacket and removed it,

carefully, with his silver watch, before

quietly lying down in a culvert,

no longer walking iambically.

 

A lass singing his lyrics ambled by;

muffled clacks from cottage shuttles faded.

The lava tide which slumbered in his soul

erupted and he saw Mount Olympus

and heard himself ask the gods for a bard

in Caledonia.  They said, Not one,

but two are granted: Burns and your good self.

In fact, your verses, like sharp dragon’s teeth,

when sown in the ploughed minds of your peers,

will multiply the poets of your land.

Where the peesweeps and the shy skylarks soar

your resting place will be; no unmarked grave

will contain you: this tunnel’s mouth no stop

for such as your unlimping lines.  And now

Paisley Buddy, you are transformed into

the waft of wild mountain thyme on the braes;

the arabesque of a bent cedar tree;

the elongated curve of a boteh,

such as you might have patterned on your loom,

or incorporated into a phrase

now echoing in the winds of Woodside,

or whispering through fogs in Ferguslie.

 

Tannahill, you wove the cloths of heaven

into Scotland’s literary fabric.

 

Photo by stephencdickson – Wikipedia

 

 

Shadows

Tags

Autumn, Emerson, shadows, Sweeney Erect, T S Eliot

 

                        Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

 

                         (The lengthened shadow of a man

                        is History, said Emerson

                        who had not seen the silhouette

                        of Sweeney straddled in the sun).

 

From Sweeney Erect by T S Eliot

The Lost Souls of Great Rissington

Tags

Fry's Five Boys chocolate, Great Barrington, Great Rissington, Lest We Forget, quatrain, Remembrance Day, shrapnel, St John Baptist church, villanelle, Windrush, World War1

Photo by Candia Dixon- Stuart

A re-blog from 5/11/16

 

I visited the church today as I wanted to somehow commemorate five

brothers who were all killed in World War 1.  Their youngest brother-

Percy Soul- died of meningitis after the war.  He was the sixth son.

Apparently some villagers were annoyed that Mrs Soul received financial

‘compensation’ for her five sons’ deaths in service.

Unbelievable!

Later she moved to Great Barrington.  She had three daughters who must

have been traumatised by the loss of their brothers.

I kept thinking of Fry’s Five Boys chocolate, for some reason and I checked

that it was in production when the boys were young.  It was.  I hope they

were able to enjoy this childish luxury as they ran around the fields,

scratching their names on the beams of a barn.  Maybe not, if they were

relatively poor.

(Photo by Kim Traynor, 2013.  Own work of enamel sign.)

It was freezing cold today.  Inside there were wall monuments to others

who had died – centuries before.  One girl had only been 19 when she

expired.

There was a little trapped wren inside and an aspiring organist who

arrived for a practice.  I don’t know how he could have attempted to play

with cold hands!

Anyway, I went home and thought I’d try a villanelle.  The rhymes are

limited, but there are 5 tercets- one for each brother, maybe.  It ends with

a quatrain, where the rhyme feels a bit anti-climactic.  But then, maybe it

suits the content… All ready for Remembrance Day.  Let’s Not Forget.

The Lost Souls of Great Rissington

So, she wouldn’t stand for God Save The King,

though all five sons lay down for him and died.

For each life she pocketed a shilling.

The candle in her window kept burning,

watched by a girl who’d never be a bride.

And a mother and three sisters crying

was no salve for the sharpness of Death’s sting.

Over the cow-common, The Windrush sighed

and, in a drawer, telegrams were yellowing.

The candle guttered- a Soul was leaving.

The Roll up yonder couldn’t be denied.

No bugler registered this sibling.

In a village barn there is a carving-

names of hopeful lads which emphasised

desires for immortality.  Living

in a peaceful hamlet?  No, perishing-

even a twin had no one at his side.

While some entrenched neighbours were gossiping,

lethal as shrapnel and more exacting.

(St John the Baptist Church, Great Rissington

Photo by Jonathan Billinger, 2007)

Centenary of Wilfred Owen’s Death

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.