It is the moment just before that we live over and over in its only time and then recount to those who were not there the beginning still echoes in laughter but resounds unrecognized every time and never comes back to begin again there are no words for calling after it and when it went it left no memory but the sound of the running sheep calling to the evening from the darkening hill what they are calling as they run is Wait what each one of them is calling is Wait
W S Merwin, From Time to Time : Garden Time
I’ve greeted sheep, cattle, Blencathra and clear blue open sky today. And I’ve made a satisfying start on the late summer Lakeland garden trim, prune and clear-up. My face is glowing in sunlight and my every muscle feels stretched. I’ve been feeling very grateful to my dear friend Bob, who takes such great care of the place when I’m away. Gardens are sanctuary spaces, aren’t they? – they speak to our imaginations, gladden our hearts and minds, exercise our bodies, and touch our souls. Bob and I will lay new breathable membrane and 25 large bags of 20mm gravel this coming weekend, further design to keep the garden low-maintenance and well trimmed.
Poets, too, are crazed by light, How to capture its changes, How to be accurate in seizing What has been caught by the eye In an instant’s flash – Light through a petal, Iridescence of clouds before sunrise. They, too, are haunted by the need To hold the fleeting still In a design – That vermilion under the haystack, Struck at sunset, Melting into the golden air Yet perfectly defined, An illuminated transience.
Today my house is lost in milk, The milky veils of a blizzard. The trees have turned pale. There are no shadows, That is the problem – no shadows At all.
It is harder to see what one sees Than anyone knows. Monet knew, spent a lifetime Trying to undazzle the light And pin it down.
May Sarton Letters from Maine: New Poems, 1984
They, too, are haunted by the need / To hold the fleeting still / In a design
We cannot hold the fleeting still. That’s why, for us, time so often appears, inexplicably, to fly. And time between the 3rd November 2022 and tonight, the 19th November 2022, appears to me to have passed in the blink of an eye. Of course, I have flashing memories of a flu jab, dental treatment, a Covid vaccine booster, poems read, accounts enumerated, letters written and received, some loving conversations – about life, and about death, about love, and about grief: yes, of course. Yet still there’s a degree of unknowing, an inability to grasp time’s flight, and probably a need to step out, sometimes, for a while, from the paths of routine, simply to breathe ‘illuminated transience.’ Yes: there are times and spaces when It is harder to see what one sees / Than anyone knows.
This blog remains a steady friend to me – sometimes in daily conversations and at others, in much the same way as happens in many other relationships, by way of catch-up. Revisiting. Re-membering. Undazzling the light. This blog reminds me – encourages me – to recognise profound beauty in the daily journey, not just in the destination. This blog slows me down within the continuum, the quiet voice at my shoulder inviting me to love and to life. And with every blink of my eyes, with every breath breathed in and out, with every attempt to catch a fleeting thought, or to let a thought take flight, the view changes. Focus zooms in and out … harder to see what one sees / Than anyone knows …
But – Light through a petal – it’s OK to be moved only ever so slightly in the breeze: to stay awhile, to let all that is, within and beyond, tell us quietly what ungraspable time and life and love are really all about.
There are nights that are so still that I can hear the small owl calling far off and a fox barking miles away. It is then that I lie in the lean hours awake, listening to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic rising and falling, rising and falling wave on wave on the long shore by the village, that is without light and companionless. And the thought comes of that other being who is awake, too, letting our prayers break on him, not like this for a few hours, but for days, years, for eternity.
R S Thomas (link) From Destinations, 1985 Collected Poems
Sometimes, in the ‘timeless moments’ of life, particular poets re-enter my heart and mind as counsel and comfort within a season. The late and deeply present R S Thomas has long told of the rising and falling of life’s great ocean, but also of the ‘nights that are so still’ – of an eternal calm. Images of such a calm have been beamed around the globe in recent days, and ears bend to hear the reassuring sound of kind wind – as the Scottish love song* has it – ‘like a bird on the wing’ across water.
Dark only in so far as a little international company were close-gathered beneath the firmament – huddled – half way up a volcano that last erupted here 350 million years ago.
Dark only in so far as midnight arrived before any of us expected her to, amid the silent music of the sun’s solstice-reluctance to leave us through the hours of our night.
Dark only in so far as we needed to scrunch our eyes a bit to focus in the twilight, taking care not to spill hot herbal tea or sit on a plate of grapes or another of fresh mango.
All else was light. Is light. Will be light. The light that – come what may – is irrepressibly present within, and in life-dancing … sometimes silent, sometimes heard(link), as though on a slight breeze …
.
.
.
Arthur’s Seat, Holyrood, Edinburgh. Wednesday 22 June 2022
Further to last evening’s post, I’ve been thinking again about some of our perceptions of time: ancient, demanding, dreamy, fast, fussed, future, governed, history, idling, loved – or not, making, meandering, measured, medieval, modern, slow, hassled, hurried, 🎵 never ending or beginning, old, wanting, working, worrying, wasting, young = beautiful, old = decrepit – in the windmills of your mind …
Aches come about when we allow our human experience of time to get out of kilter: when we try too hard or for too long to hammer opposition, push growth, finish faster, win hearts, ‘conquer’ nations, security issues or workloads, pump muscles, grind corn or wheat or gears. And sometimes muscles ache, sometimes hearts ache. Sometimes minds and souls crash to a standstill. Sometimes. Often, even.
But the budding trees and flowers in my garden in still-a-bit-wintry-looking early Spring? What’s their perception of time? Have they been resisting winter? Has the apple told the acer ‘I hate cold! Can’t wait for Spring! Wish I was somewhere else’ ? Well, maybe. I can’t know. But I guess not. Frost, gale, sunshine or snow – the movement I observe in my garden is slow. And year-round miracles occur in its quiet state of simply being.
For some time I thought there was time
and that there would always be time
for what I had a mind to do
and what I could imagine
going back to and finding it
as I had found it the first time
but by this time I do not know
what I thought when I thought back then
there is no time yet it grows less
there is the sound of rain at night
arriving unknown in the leaves
once without before or after
then I hear the thrush waking
at daybreak singing the new song
Our neighbour brought us a beautiful thrush, stunned after flying directly into her window. ‘You’re good with birds,’ she said.
And it’s true that, sometimes, after an hour or two of warmth and watching, breeze ruffling feathers revivifies, and we have known the joy of tentative flapping giving way again to flight.
But not this time ‘as I had found it the first time’. So there’s been another little burial.
After teachingI am only beginning to know what I was taught
As a child about poetry, about life, about myself;
It takes a long time for words to become thought,
For thought, the slow burner, to burn through
Into life where it can scorch the palm of a hand,
When what was merely beautiful or strange
Suffers the metamorphosis, the blood-change,
Looks out of eyes or walks down the street,
All that was abstract become concrete,
Is part of you like an eyelash or your hair;
You say “Poetry” and mean you have been there.
You are just beginning to understand
What it is all about, the imaginary land,
Say, “I can’t possibly describe the weather.
It’s as if the sky burned, was all on fire,
Ecstasy that makes ash of bodily desire —
But all I have to show is a stone and a blue feather.”
My children, you with whom I have learned so much,
Do not turn back to these hours; go forward,
Look to the fertile days and years ahead
When all that meaning and its implication,
The full tone and the half-tone and the whisper
Will sound together and keep the mind awake,
As after hearing a difficult quartet
The theme comes clear and you listen again
Long after you had thought you heard;
So it is with the deep thought, the deep word.
Now we are able only to graph the flight;
For we never actually rose from the ground,
Imagine a moment when student and teacher
(Long after the day and the lesson are over)
Will soar together to the pure immortal air
And find Yeats, Hopkins, Eliot waiting there.
But you understand, it cannot happen yet.
It takes a long time to live what you learn:
I believe we shall meet again and show each other
These curious marvels, the stone and the blue feather;
And we shall meet again when your own children are
Taught what they will not know for many a year.
Long after you had thought you heard; / So it is with the deep thought, the deep word.
Yes. And here in cave-like depths of contemplative silence (all-beyond the initial verbosity) one catches momentary glimpses of invitation, like fireflies, eternally suspended in air: go forward, / look to the fertile days and years ahead.
Photo at Pixabay