'Remembering the ocean, So calm, so lately crossed'

 The tribe continues to increase, the latest addition being a great-niece (bringing the tally of great-nephews and nieces to nine, by my calculations). The baby was born rather late, though not as late as the one addressed in Donald Justice's beautiful poem, To A Ten-Months' Child (this is the long version; often the first two triplets only are printed)...

Late arrival, no
One would think of blaming you
For hesitating so.

Who, setting his hand to knock
At a door so strange as this one,
Might not draw back?

Certainly, once admitted,
You will be made to feel
Like one of the invited.

Still, because you come
From so remote a kingdom,
You may feel out of place,

Tongue-tied and shy among
So many strangers, all
Babbling with a strange tongue.

Well, that’s no disgrace.
So might any person
So recently displaced,

Remembering the ocean,
So calm, so lately crossed.

'The only drink you want after it is more of it'

 In the supermarket yesterday morning I found myself talking whisky and Kingsley Amis with the chap behind the till, which was a pleasant surprise. I'd bought a bottle of Chivas Regal 12-year-old (vulgar, I know, but very drinkable – and, more to the point, on offer), and somehow we (the chap and I) got onto whisky brands you don't see any more – Haig, Vat 69 – and he came up with the MacAllan 10-year-old, a whisky that enjoyed a big vogue in the 1970s but was way beyond my means at the time. It was, he told me, the favourite whisky of toper supreme Kingsley Amis, who apparently slipped references to it into all his novels – I hadn't noticed, but will keep my eyes open in future. At least he didn't do any adverts for it  – unlike Sanderson (remember 'Very Kingsley Amis, Very Sanderson'?) – but it was clearly a drink he loved from the moment he discovered it, on tour of Speyside distilleries. The MacAllan 10-year-old, matured in sherry casks, was 'widely regarded in the trade as the king of malts,' Amis declared. 'The flavour's rich, even powerful, but completely smooth, as smooth as that of a fine Cognac, and immediately enjoyable ... The only drink you want after it is more of it.' 'No spirit known to me,' he raved, 'can touch it for sheer quantity of flavour, for smoothness and for – what would you call it? – duration, lastingness, the ability to go on hanging round the mouth and nose.' High praise, and from someone with unparalleled experience in the field. Despite Sir Kingsley's heartfelt endorsements, MacAllan discontinued this particular malt more than a decade ago, and bottles are only available at eye-watering prices. I think I'll be sticking to Chivas, or whatever else is going cheap. 

'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.