Eleven years

Epithalamion

a walk and a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Hark, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and waterblowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer’s sovereign good.

By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies huddling out,
Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about.

This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast
Into such a sudden zest
Of summertime joys
That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best
There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;
Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood
By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,
Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels there,
Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots
Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with—down he dings
His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:
Careless these in coloured wisp
All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks
Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp
Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots
Fast he opens, last he offwrings
Till walk the world he can with bare his feet
And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks
Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks
And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy quicksilvery shivès and shoots
And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,
Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will the fleet
Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs
Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about him, laughs, swims.
Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean
I should be wronging longer leaving it to float
Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note—
What is … the delightful dene?
Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends
Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns
Rankèd round the bower

If you click to enlarge,

you will see that the air was filled with dragonflies.

13:09 from Epithalamion

Plummy

Plum tomato blight.

Plum delight.

And a treat for the weekend:

a documentary about Pelham Grenville Wodehouse,

often known as Plum.

Quietly at Stratford

Not another visit to an English country garden.

It's the Olympic Park.

 For the Paralympic 7-a-side football

played under a sky as blue as the pitch.

And amazing goal ball, played in complete silence 

so that the blind and blindfolded players

 can hear the bells ringing in the ball.

After the ball went out of play

they played just the first few bars of this

to quieten the spectators.

Cat and mouse

peaceably basking in the slanting sunlight,

lately returned to the sitting room mantlepiece.

Last seen in The Gift

and

The Cats are back in Town

Plum line

Quietly at Great Dixter

 We arrived early

 and although we could distantly hear 

Fergus Garrett the head gardener

mowing the meadow grass

and glimpsed one young man loping away

with garden twine

hanging from both back pockets,

it was a rare chance 

for the flowers

to make the loudest statements

in Christopher Lloyd's exuberant September garden.

Where the usual throng was that day

we never found out.

No walk in the park

In August, two years ago, while walking in Greenwich Park,

I noticed tiny white tufts growing at regular intervals in the grass.

I bent down to examine them and found that they were plastic.

How strange.

Only later did I discover that they were markers 

for the Olympic cross country event.

 Yesterday, we attended the first equestrian event

of the Paralympics at Greenwich Park.

Great Britain's Natasha Baker posted the highest dressage score, 

riding Cabral in driving rain, 

which started just as she entered the arena.

The penultimate rider, Barbara Minneci rode Barilla,

an Irish Sport Horse, sidesaddle.

It was easy to forget why this was not just a walk in the park

for any of the competitors, 

who performed with poise and precision

on their light-footed horses.

 The commentator repeatedly asked for no applause

until the horses were reunited with their handlers,

so I'm clapping loudly now.

The rust coloured mackintosh

Let's go to Brighton, I said,

to see the Biba exhibition.

(I once had a Biba mackintosh.

It was rust coloured and had sleeves 

you needed pipecleaners for instead of arms.

I was so proud of it, 

I was prepared to risk cutting off my circulation.)

Let's not drive,I said.

We'll go by train along the coast.

When we got there, well,

it was pretty much like Penzance

with its storm tossed seas

and brave souls promenading,

fishing

 and flying.

This young gull hunkered down, wisely, I felt.

And I had made a mistake about the exhibition.

It doesn't start until next month,

but I did see a Harold Harvey,

A Kitchen Interior,

which squared the circle nicely, 
as they had all been taken down in the Penlee Museum 
when I went to see the Laura Knight exhibition.

Gertrude, on the stepladder, has a cardigan very much like mine.

The table and the mirror frame 
are the exact colour of my Biba mackintosh.