'I listen to money singing'

 On this day in 1973, Philip Larkin's mind was on money, that most concrete of abstractions. He wrote, or completed to his satisfaction, this poem, which was published in the collection High Windows. The last stanza is beautiful, I think...

Money

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:

    ‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?

I am all you never had of goods and sex.

    You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:   

    They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.

By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:

    Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:

    You can’t put off being young until you retire,

And however you bank your screw, the money you save

    Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down

    From long french windows at a provincial town,   

The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad

    In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

The Feeder Dilemma

 Back home after a weekend over the border in Derbyshire, I am, as usual, keeping an eye on the bird feeder action out there in the garden. It's been a disappointing winter, with the house sparrows doing their best to monopolise the big feeder (yes, we're lucky to have them – many towns and cities have none) and the starlings muscling in from time to time, no one having told them they're on the Red List of endangered species. Great tits and, to a slightly lesser extent, blue tits come and go, and the odd coal tit nips in from time to time (their long-tailed cousins prefer to feed in the trees). The goldfinches that were so abundant last year have hardly shown up, even at the nyger seed feeders I put up especially for them, the ingrates, and I've seen very few chaffinches and even fewer greenfinches, one of the dominant feeder-habitués last year. Of course, like practically everyone else, I enjoy watching the garden birds – and, in my case, the squirrels which are still trying to foil the squirrel-proof feeder, and failing ignominiously. Watching the birds gives us all great pleasure, it feels good, and it surely does us good – even Science tells us so (measurable benefits to mental and physical wellbeing, etc.) But does it do the birds good? Probably not. I keep reading and hearing unarguable evidence that feeding birds in the garden encourages the bullies and predators at the expense of more timid and vulnerable species which are already having enough trouble hanging on. The bold, aggressive species thrive on our largesse, which makes them still bolder and more aggressive, and that is bad news for many of the rest  – and, sadly, feeders can spread avian diseases, one of which recently had an all but exterminating effect on greenfinches. Bird feeders also act as an all-day buffet for sparrowhawks, but that's fine by me – I'm always excited to see one of them in the garden. 
Am I going to carry on feeding the birds? I expect I am, but probably in a more limited way. The birds, or most of them, will still come to the garden. And I'm going to clean the feeders thoroughly to make sure they don't spread disease among my feathered friends. 

'And everywhere that spacious blue...'

 Valentine's Day again, so I guess a love poem is called for. Very few modern poets, I think, can write anything very convincing in this line. However, one who can is Dick Davis. Here is his great love poem, Uxor Vivamus...

The first night that I slept with you

And slept, I dreamt (these lines are true):

Now newly married we had moved

Into an unkempt house we loved –

The rooms were large, the floors of stone,

The garden gently overgrown

With sunflowers, phlox, and mignonette –

All as we would have wished and yet

There was a shabby something there

Tainting the mild and windless air.

Where did it lurk?  Alarmed we saw

The walls about us held the flaw –

They were of plaster, like grey chalk,

Porous and dead:  it seemed our talk,

Our glances, even love, would die

With such indifference standing by.

Then, scarcely thinking what I did,

I chipped the plaster and it slid

In easy pieces to the floor;

It crumbed cleanly, more and more

Fell unresistingly away –

And there, beneath that deadening grey,

A fresco stood revealed:  sky-blue

Predominated, for the view

Was of an ebullient country scene,

The crowning of some pageant queen

Whose dress shone blue, and over all

The summer sky filled half the wall.

And so it was in every room,

The plaster’s undistinguished gloom

Gave way to dances, festivals,

Processions, muted pastorals –

And everywhere that spacious blue:

I woke, and lying next to you

Knew all that I had dreamt was true.

Those Eyes...

 This haunting image is the so-called Mona Lisa of the Depths, a daguerrotype of an unknown woman that was found in the wreck of the SS Central America, lying on the ocean bed off the coast of South Carolina. The ship sank in a hurricane in September 1857, with the loss of 425 lives and some 30,000lb of gold. The wreck was located in 1988, with the aid of Bayesian search theory (whatever that is – more than once I've had a brief sense of understanding Bayesian statistics, but it soon passes), and gold to the value of $100-150 million was salvaged. And so was the Mona Lisa of the Depths, an extraordinary survival and a portrait of rare intensity and directness. She seems, truly, a 'living likeness'. Those eyes...

'the curiosity is satisfied and the sale has dropped...'

 In April 1817 Charles Ollier, Keats's first publisher, wrote thus to the poet's brother George: 

'Sir, – We regret that your brother ever requested us to publish his book, or that our opinion of its talent should have led us to acquiesce in undertaking it. We are, however, much obliged to you for relieving us from the unpleasant necessity of declining any further connexion with it which we must have done, as we think the curiosity is satisfied and the sale has dropped. – By far the greater number of Persons who have purchased it from us have found fault with it in such plain terms, that we have in many cases offer'd to take the book back rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has, time after time, been shower'd on it...'

The book was Poems (1817), Keats's first publication, a volume which contains one of the greatest sonnets in the language – this:

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Poems did initially attract a couple of good reviews, but was duly shot down by Blackwood's Magazine, largely because of Keats's association with  the enemy, i.e. Leigh Hunt. Hunt himself declared that the Chapman's Homer sonnet 'completely announced the new poet taking possession'. He was right. 
By the way, if anyone fancies owning the first edition of Poems, in its original boards, there's one on the market now for just shy of £50,000.

Keep On Punning

 I see that the UK Pun Championships are taking place this evening, as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival. Good to know that this much maligned form of wit – not the lowest but potentially one of the highest – is being celebrated in this annual event. 
In literature, the pun has a distinguished history – Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are full of puns – and perhaps achieved its most evolved form, much later, in Flann O'Brien's tales of Keats and Chapman, each beautifully detailed anecdote crafted to end in a fantastically ingenious punning pay-off line. Here is a fine example: 

'Around the time that Chapman was becoming disillusioned with his friend Keats’s flock of dotterels, acquired for seven and six from a man in the Dandelion Market and put out to roost in their back garden, the birds redeemed themselves by showing an unexpected talent as gentlemen’s outfitters. Picking up the large quantities of thread and fabric that Keats liked to keep lying around the place in the garden, God only knows why, the birds would get to work and several hours later would have produced a dazzling array of formal neckwear. The products of their labours, it must be said, were not in the best of taste. The colour schemes were gaudy and the patterns in the ‘novelty’ genre beloved of salesmen on their way to office Christmas parties and other such occasions. Yet the public went wild for their designs, especially a garish green number known as the ‘Happy Leprechaun’. Why, even Eamon de Valera was spotted wearing one. Sitting in their kitchen one day, our heroes discussed these changes in gentlemen’s fashions. ‘All is changed, changed dotterelly’, observed Keats. ‘A terrible bow-tie is born’, agreed Chapman.'

But for sheer pun firepower, surely no one ever equalled the Victorian poet Thomas Hood, as in this virtuoso performance, Faithless Nelly Gray: A Pathetic Ballad –

'Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.

Now, as they bore him off the field,
Said he, "Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot!"

The army-surgeons made him limbs:
Said he, "They're only pegs;
But there's as wooden members quite
As represent my legs!"

Now, Ben he loved a pretty maid,
Her name was Nelly Gray;
So he went to pay his devours,
When he devoured his pay!

But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off!

"O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray!
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat
Should be more uniform!"

Said she, "I loved a soldier once
For he was blithe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave!

"Before you had those timber toes,
Your love I did allow;
But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now!"

"O, Nelly Gray! O, Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajos's breaches !"

"Why then," said she, "you've lost the feet
Of legs in war's alarms,
And now you cannot wear your shoes
Upon your feats of arms!"

"O, false and fickle Nelly Gray!
I know why you refuse: –
Though I've no feet – some other man
Is standing in my shoes!

"I wish I ne'er had seen your face;
But, now, a long farewell!
For you will be my death; – alas
You will not be my Nell!"

Now, when he went from Nelly Gray,
His heart so heavy got,
And life was such a burden grown,
It made him take a knot!

So round his melancholy neck
A rope he did entwine,
And, for his second time in life,
Enlisted in the Line.

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs,
And, as his legs were off – of course
He soon was off his legs!

And there he hung, till he was dead
As any nail in town –
For, though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down!

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died –
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads
With a stake in his inside!'


It is, I suppose, possible to have too many puns...

An 'Incident'

 Browsing in the Lichfield & Burntwood Independent, I came across the headline 'Police seek to reassure residents after incident'. Oh dear, I thought, what could that have been?
It was this: on Market Street the other day, a group of 'around six males' had chased another group 'for no reason'. Admittedly they appeared to have their faces covered, which must have looked slightly alarming, but no one was injured and no threats were made. The police were quick off the mark in responding, and are now busy 'working proactively in the area to reassure residents' and 'taking steps to address concerns proactively across the city'. It's things like this that make me so glad to be living in Lichfield rather than London. Even in the leafy suburb (the Demiparadise) where I lived, an 'incident' like this would never have made page 8 of the local paper; it wouldn't have made the paper at all, nor would the police be 'proactively' reassuring residents. Those days are long gone. Now, even a stabbing would most likely be a small story on an inside page. 
Also in the L & B Independent, I see that the excellent local history group Lichfield Discovered is setting up a heritage 'hub' – in the Schoolmaster's House (dating back to 1682) of Lichfield grammar school, where Samuel Johnson and David Garrick were pupils. Ah, Lichfield...