A Minimum of Kindness

Tags

Adam and Eve, Boldwood and Bathsheba, Burden stitch, cloths of Heaven, crewel, Die Walkure, George Bernard Shaw, Kelmscott, May Morris, Pre-Raphaelite, Primrose Hill, Sergius and Raina, Sparling, Superman, The Golden Stair, Tree of Life, Valentine card

A Minimum of Kindness

 

(May Morris, 1872.  Wikipedia.  Rossetti Archive; Bridgeman Images)

 

George Bernard Shaw:

 

She felt we had a mystic betrothal.

Her eyes betrayed some kind of assent.

Well, like her card, I found her quite handsome.

She asked for a minimum of kindness.

 

She’d shown maidens worshipping at my shrine,

but I was with a mature woman then.

Did she want me to cast cloths of heaven,

such as she embroidered, under her feet?

 

I tried to tread softly on all her dreams.

I was a bachelor then and too poor

to act as Sergius to her Raina.

(I hadn’t written my wretched play yet!)

 

Only a Superman could support her.

One minute she was roof-riding Kelmscott;

then absorbed as a domestic goddess,

designing tangles of honeysuckle,

 

which I now realise is dependent

and not parasitic, as I once feared.

Hmm, should women send men Valentine cards?

I think she had read too many novels.

 

I was no Boldwood to her Bathsheba.

She married Sparling in a fit of pique!

At least we remained friends.  I went to see

her when he was away. We walked over

 

Primrose Hill; listened to Die Walküre.

I was marginally more excited

than staying at home to watch my paint dry.

Now she stands alone on The Golden Stair.

 

Later she wrote and made sure that I knew

that she was a remarkable woman.

Was this to stick a crewel into me,

pricking the Burden stitch into my heart?

 

How many times did May sew that Tree of Life?

I would not play Adam to her Eve:

it was a matter of independence,

but this Tree finally caused my downfall.

Snodbury

Tags

Antarctic krill, catharsis, compund eye, convergent evolution, Dianetics, Hornby, le mot juste, Rev Awdry, Ribena, Salsa, Scrooge, stirrup cups, Tree of Life

(Compound Eye of Antarctic Krill: Wikipedia.  Photo by Gerd Alberti and

Uwe Kils)

 

Snodbury was actually his mother’s surname, he believed.

She had waltzed off to Venezuela, following her political dreams

and had settled down with a salsa musician, producing his half-

brother.

Aunt Augusta ( Editor:In Retrospect May She Rest In Peace and Rise In

Glory!) had deposited him, as a confused four year old, in St Birinus’

Pre-Prep Department, where he might have turned into a pre-pubescent

Scrooge, given that he was often forgotten at half terms.

It was not the first time that Gus (Snod) had had the distinct sensation

that someone was standing behind him whilst he was shaving.  Through

the condensation he wondered if, like another sweet young prince, he was

about to encounter his ghostly father.  There were more surprising things

in Heaven and Earth, he was sure.

He felt that it was not entirely down to thespian self-delusions that he

could summon up a vague remembrance of an encounter with a man

called Arthur in some school holidays.  The visits were etched on his

consciousness as they were marked by the gifts of a piece of Hornby

kit and a Rev Awdry book.

Aunt Augusta would collect him and take him on the train all the way

to Kent and then they would take a taxi to Wivern Mote.

His aunt and Arthur would sit round the fire in the converted stable block,

drinking mulled wine, if it was a Christmas Holiday, and gin and tonic, if

it wasn’t.  He remembered the odd silver cups from which the wine had

been imbibed.  They had embossed foxes’ heads on them.  He had been

drinking Ribena from a tooth mug and had asked about them.  He

remembered now: they were stirrup cups, he had been informed.

When it was time to go, he had to shake Arthur’s hand with his own

mittened fingers and he grew to anticipate the half crown that would

be passed into his woolly palm.  It was never a two shilling piece.  He

could tell, without looking- which would have been rude-just by feeling

the milled edge.  Yes, Arthur had been generous, if enigmatic.

It wouldn’t seem long before he was back to the security of school- that

same establishment to which he had dedicated not only the best years

of his life,but the majority of them.  The only noteworthy hiatus was

when he had studied Classics at university and had then returned like

the Biblical dog…

The toilet paper he had licked and stuck to his shaving nick fell off.  He

hoped the wound would heal more quickly than the childhood scars he

was well aware of bearing into advanced adulthood.

‘Catharsis‘- that was le mot juste.  If he could only lance the boil of his

carbuncular life, he felt the bloodletting would be beneficial.  There had

been so many toxic infections visited upon him in the course of his

school-masterly life.

He laughed to himself:  Pus in Boots!  This was the way his tangential mind

roved around, seeking bad puns.

Yes, Dear Reader, the exploration of the life and times of this apparent

nonentity will be the very means whereby he may be purged and brought

to a hopeful re-birth (but not in any Dianetical way, I assure you.)

By tracing his twig’s development on The Tree of Life, by exploring

different starting points, he hoped to arrive at the identical solution: himself.

The Biology teacher had explained convergent evolution to him, but I won’t

bore you with an elucidation now.

He had also wished that he could see the world through a compound eye-

to see himself as others saw him and to see himself more clearly.

Perhaps with ocular enhancement he would avoid any more shaving nicks…

The Judas Tree

Tags

blood geld, Cain, crown of thorns, Cybore, Dorset, George MacDonald, Haceldama, Jacobus, Joshua Tree, Judas, Laurence Whistler, Moreton Church, Moses, nard, parricide, Pilate, Redbud, Ruben, Sanhedrin, Scariot, Sicarius, Tree of Life

It’s that time of year when we remember Judas…

A re-blog:

Ever since I wrote my poem called ‘The Forgiveness Window’ (in my Poetry

section), inspired by glass windows in Moreton Church, by Laurence

Whistler, I have been meditating on Judas Iscariot and the question of

forgiveness. This poem has been some time on my back burner, but I gave

birth to it this morning.

The Judas Tree

(George Macdonald: When a man begins to loathe himself he begins to be saved.)

Those plumb-like seed pods cannot mask the corpse.

The sagging branch touches the earth. Strange fruit

suspended from a limb: a pendulum

measuring a moment of treachery.

At each bloom’s heart is a crown of thorns.

From the scarified trunk blood beads burst forth-

a rosary protecting its blush of shame.

 

Cybore had a premonition:

she dreamt her son would ruin Issachar.

She and her husband, Ruben, cast him off-

Moses-like, adrift, in a pitched basket.

He then washed up on Scariot, whose Queen,

childless, lonely, feigned a pregnancy,

taking the outcast child to her own breast.

Anxiety dispelled, she then conceived

her own son, Jacobus, whom Judas loathed.

Supplanted, he destroyed, as Cain did; fled

to Pilate’s service in Jerusalem.

Then, asked to fetch his master some ripe fruit,

he argued with the owner of the land

and slew him with a rock. Haceldama-

The Field of Blood- is his, with the man’s wife,

who promptly tells him of his parricide.

Now he is Sicarius: ‘assassin.’

He follows Jesus, seeking redemption,

yet dips his fingers in the common purse

and, angry that three hundred silver coins

spent on some precious ointment should be poured

on the Messiah’s feet, he takes umbrage;

betrays his Master for a tenth of that-

the price one paid to liberate a slave.

Since bowels of mercy he had none, he spilled

his innards from that tree, so that his soul’s

quietus should not defile the lips

that had kissed God. He died not on the earth;

nor in the heavens (where men and angels range),

but dangled in the air, devils’ plaything.

Jesus harrowed Hell to plant His tree;

to cut down Judas and to set him free.

Look! Now we see the pods have seeds in them

and, though deciduous, those leaves return,

heart-shaped, assuring us of sins forgiven.

Its branches lifted up, like hands in prayer,

surrounded by an intense cloud of nard,

the Redbud props a ladder to the stars

and even men like Judas can aspire

to Paradise, via The Tree of Life.

Blood-geld bought the Gentile burial plot-

the first Garden of Rest, that Potter’s Field.

(Sanhedrin-laundered guilt’s slick charity.)

But the Potter makes new vessels from shards,

firing up His kiln from the Joshua trees.

 

The Judas Tree

Tags

Cain, Cyborea, Issachar, Joshua Tree, Judas, Laurence Whistler, Moreton Church, nard, parricide, Pilate, Potter's Field, Redbud, Ruben, Scariot, seedpods, Sicarius, strange fruit, thirty pieces silver, Tree of Life

Ever since I wrote my poem called ‘The Forgiveness Window’ (in my Poetry

section), inspired by glass windows in Moreton Church, by Laurence

Whistler, I have been meditating on Judas Iscariot and the question of

forgiveness. This poem has been some time on my back burner, but I gave

birth to it this morning.

The Judas Tree

(George Macdonald: When a man begins to loathe himself he begins to be saved.)

Those plumb-like seed pods cannot mask the corpse.

The sagging branch touches the earth. Strange fruit

suspended from a limb: a pendulum

measuring a moment of treachery.

At each bloom’s heart is a crown of thorns.

From the scarified trunk blood beads burst forth-

a rosary protecting its blush of shame.

 

Cybore had a premonition:

she dreamt her son would ruin Issachar.

She and her husband, Ruben, cast him off-

Moses-like, adrift, in a pitched basket.

He then washed up on Scariot, whose Queen,

childless, lonely, feigned a pregnancy,

taking the outcast child to her own breast.

Anxiety dispelled, she then conceived

her own son, Jacobus, whom Judas loathed.

Supplanted, he destroyed, as Cain did; fled

to Pilate’s service in Jerusalem.

Then, asked to fetch his master some ripe fruit,

he argued with the owner of the land

and slew him with a rock. Haceldama-

The Field of Blood- is his, with the man’s wife,

who promptly tells him of his parricide.

Now he is Sicarius: ‘assassin.’

 

He follows Jesus, seeking redemption,

yet dips his fingers in the common purse

and, angry that three hundred silver coins

spent on some precious ointment should be poured

on the Messiah’s feet, he takes umbrage;

betrays his Master for a tenth of that-

the price one paid to liberate a slave.

 

Since bowels of mercy he had none, he spilt

his innards from that tree, so that his soul’s

quietus should not defile the lips

that had kissed God. He died not on the earth;

nor in the heavens (where men and angels range),

but dangled in the air, devils’ plaything.

 

Jesus harrowed Hell to plant His tree;

to cut down Judas and to set him free.

Look! Now we see the pods have seeds in them

and, though deciduous, those leaves return,

heart-shaped, assuring us of sins forgiven.

Its branches lifted up, like hands in prayer,

surrounded by an intense cloud of nard,

the Redbud props a ladder to the stars

and even men like Judas can aspire

to Paradise, via The Tree of Life.

Blood-geld bought the Gentile burial plot-

the first Garden of Rest, that Potter’s Field.

(Sanhedrin-laundered guilt’s slick charity.)

But the Potter makes new vessels from shards,

firing up His kiln from the Joshua trees.

 

 

 

Ash Dieback

Tags

Alex Salmond, Anne Lorne Gillies, ash dieback, Cutty Sark, devolution, Fraxinus, mountain ash, Nicola Sturgeon, rowan tree, Scottish Assembly, Scottish Referendum, sorbus aucuparia, Tam O' Shanter, Tree of Life, Tricia Marwick

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was a little girl, I lived in a row of terraced houses, which was elevated above street level, with grassy slopes which led to the pavement- and all cordoned off by neat privet hedging at the bottom.

A path ran in front of the block of four dwellings.  At either end there was a flight of stone steps, with a double cast iron handrail- ideal for childish acrobatics.  And, to protect the whole block from witches, there was a rowan tree in the small garden patches of the end houses.

So, when I heard about dieback among ash trees, or Chalara fraxinea, to be precise, my first concern was whether rowan, or mountain ash was of the same susceptible genus.

I Googled and somehow found myself on a site about Alex Salmond.  What possible connection could there be between the First Minister and Pest Risk Analysis?

Apparently he had recorded a duet with Caledonia’s own Anne Lorne Gillies.  They sang a version of The Rowan Tree.  Could it be that Eck could transmit crown dieback on the Tree of Life, as sorbus aucuparia is sometimes known?

By giving them the vote prematurely, young saplings could suffer particular destruction and be infected in their nurseries with devolutionary disease.

Dinna fash yersel’!  Haud yer horses!  One of the nation’s- and I mean the UK’s favourite trees is thankfully immune to his kiss of death.  Just as well, as we don’t want to be exposed to any witchcraft from Nicola Sturgeon, Nanny, or Cutty Sarks in general. (see Burns’ Tam O’ Shanter for a clarification! Nothing to do with sailing ships built on the River Leven.)

So, nae sweat!  The rowan seems to be safe for the moment.  And The Scottish Assembly is safe from any more musical experiments, as The Presiding Officer, Tricia Marwick has banned singing in Holyrood.