Happy Easter

In church this Easter morning (my first visit, I fear, since last Easter, but I was ill at Christmas), the reader of the prayers suffered a strangely poetical slip of the tongue. Meaning to pray for 'those whose mortal remains lie buried in this churchyard', he slipped into 'remortal mains'. Remortal - dead again? Alive again? Mains - the principal parts, seas, channels? Mains before afters? Remortal mains - it has a ring to it...
Anyway, here's wishing a very Happy Easter to all who browse here.

A Hundredth Birthday, and a Ninetieth

Over on Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp notes that today is the centenary of the birth of R.S. Thomas. The Welsh are marking the occasion on quite a scale (largely, one suspects, for nationalistic rather than poetic reasons) and there's a new Uncollected Poems coming out. R.S. himself would no doubt take a dim view of this; he destroyed most of what he wrote and took care to leave as little as possible behind. Last year, in the course of reading Byron Rogers' wonderful biography of R.S., I posted quite often on him (try a search on Nigeness) - mostly on aspects of his extraordinary personality. But on this notable birthday, let's have a poem - also on a birthday theme - and remind ourselves of what a very very good poet he was, whether 'major' or 'minor' - who cares? And this poem also hints at what a very good priest he could be, at least for the poorer and less fortunate of his flock...

Ninetieth Birthday

You go up the long track
That will take a car, but is best walked
On slow foot, noting the lichen
That writes history on the page
Of the grey rock. Trees are about you
At first, but yield to the green bracken,
The nightjar's house: you can hear it spin
On warm evenings; it is still now
In the noonday heat, only the lesser
Voices sound, blue-fly and gnat
And the stream's whisper. As the road climbs,
You will pause for breath and the far sea's
Signal will flash, till you turn again
To the steep track, buttressed with cloud.

And there at the top that old woman,
Born almost a century back
In that stone farm, awaits your coming;
Waits for the news of the lost village
She thinks she knows, a place that exists
In her memory only.
You bring her greeting
And praise for having lasted so long
With time's knife shaving the bone.
Yet no bridge joins her own
World with yours, all you can do
Is lean kindly across the abyss
To hear words that were once wise.

A Welcome Song

A sunny morning - though still unseasonally cold - and, as I walked along the path beside the railway track on my way to the station, came a burst of beautiful melodic song from somewhere low down in an ivy-clad pathside poplar. I paused and, as I peered round the tree, I saw, on a bare branch low down, a nondescript small bird of warblerish appearance throwing its head back, opening its beak and singing fit to burst. It looked very like a Garden Warbler - a bird distinguished by its complete lack of distinguishing features - but it can't have been, as it's far too early in the year and Garden Warblers are also famous for  hardly ever being seen, only heard. This lusty songster seemed quite happy to remain in view as I listened. He must have been a Blackcap (I was seeing him from below, so the cap would have been hidden), a warbler that - undeterred by our increasingly grim winters - has in recent decades changed its habits to overwinter here. I well remember the first time I saw one in the garden on a snowy winter's day some 30 years ago and could hardly believe me eyes...
Anyway, this burst of song was a heart-lifting sound on yet another cold morning when it seems that winter will never end and spring will never come. It will, and soon there will be Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers and Whitethroats - and maybe even the odd unseen, undistinguished Garden Warbler.
[You can listen to a singing Blackcap here.]

Political News

The decision by David Milliband, brother of Labour leader Ed, to take a new job heading up International Rescue exposes a deep ideological rift at the heart of the party (and indeed the Milliband family). Ed has long been known for his commitment to stop-motion claymation - indeed it is rumoured that he began life as an abandoned Aardman project. His close friendship with sinister Aardman mastermind Nick Park is viewed with suspicion by some, who claim Ed is 'in Aardman's pocket'. Brother David, on the other hand, has long been associated with the supermarionation techniques of Gerry Anderson and his followers. Now, by taking over from Jeff Tracy at the head of International Rescue, David has nailed his colours firmly to the mast. Socialists Are Go!

Meanwhile...

Over on the Dabbler, I consider the strange case of Edward Bulwer-Lytton - who, oddly, has come up elsewhere recently. A Bulwer-Lytton revival? Don't hold your breath...

Pools and Bloom

Two great poets were born on this day - A.E. Housman in 1859 and Robert Frost in 1874.
Let us first look around  - and forward - with Frost, whose Spring Pools beautifully notates a scene that will be familiar to anyone who's walked in woodland this sodden late winter/'spring'...

'These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods---
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.'


And now to look forward with Housman to the real spring that must - despite all current appearances to the contrary - come...

'LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.' When J.L. Carr - the Last Englishman - was a headmaster in Kettering,

he would, when the cherries were in bloom, lead the entire school through the nearby streets chanting this poem aloud. Many years later, some of his ex-pupils were surprised to find that hey still knew it by heart. That, I would suggest, is true education.

Flying Flapjack

It's hard to credit this story, but it does appear to be true, and those tireless newshounds of the BBC News website have worked hard to 'stand it up'. They also, in typical BBC fashion, provide an invaluable 'Three-point [is the gag intentional? Hard to say] Guide to Flapjack'. It does not say much for Essex County Council's flapjack that it can be used as an offensive weapon - though, looking back on the school dinners of my boyhood, most of what we were served could have been so employed, and quite often was. Anything was better than eating the stuff.