Spring Song, Meirionydd
A white combustion rules these fields,
and testifies to men, and rams;
the mind of winter thaws, and yields–
Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
The high grey stone is clean of snows, the streams come tumbling, far from dams; the wind is green, the day’s eye grows– Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
The heart, gone light as all the ewes, redounds with milk, and epigrams that make no sense; except their news– Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
In gold October, grown to size, they’ll know the hook, and hang with hams, but March is all their enterprise– Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
It’s St David’s Day today so Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! I’m in Cardiff and shortly heading to St David’s Hall for a gala concert being held to mark the occasion. As has become traditional on this blog, I thought I’d post a poem by the great Welsh poet R.S. Thomas. This is called Welsh History:
We were a people taut for war; the hills Were no harder, the thin grass Clothed them more warmly than the coarse Shirts our small bones. We fought, and were always in retreat, Like snow thawing upon the slopes Of Mynydd Mawr; and yet the stranger Never found our ultimate stand In the thick woods, declaiming verse To the sharp prompting of the harp. Our kings died, or they were slain By the old treachery at the ford. Our bards perished, driven from the halls Of nobles by the thorn and bramble. We were a people bred on legends, Warming our hands at the red past. The great were ashamed of our loose rags Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree Of blood and birth, our lean bellies And mud houses were a proof Of our ineptitude for life. We were a people wasting ourselves In fruitless battles for our masters, In lands to which we had no claim, With men for whom we felt no hatred. We were a people, and are so yet. When we have finished quarrelling for crumbs Under the table, or gnawing the bones Of a dead culture, we will arise And greet each other in a new dawn.
Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere) arranging a window,into which people look (while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here) and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and from moving New and Old things, while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there) and
The rain it rains without a stay
In the hills above us, in the hills;
And presently the floods break way
Whose strength is in the hills.
The trees they suck from every cloud,
The valley brooks they roar aloud—
Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands,
Lowlands under the hills!
The first wood down is sere and small, From the hills—the brishings off the hills; And then come by the bats and all We cut last year in the hills; And then the roots we tried to cleave But found too tough and had to leave— Polting through the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills!
The eye shall look, the ear shall hark To the hills, the doings in the hills, And rivers mating in the dark With tokens from the hills. Now what is weak will surely go, And what is strong must prove it so— Stand fast in the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills!
The floods they shall not be afraid— Nor the hills above ’em, nor the hills— Of any fence which man has made Betwixt him and the hills. The waters shall not reckon twice For any work of man’s device, But bid it down to the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills!
The floods shall sweep corruption clean— By the hills, the blessing of the hills— That more the meadows may be green New-mended from the hills. The crops and cattle shall increase, Nor little children shall not cease. Go—plough the lowlands, lowlands, Lowlands under the hills!
One for the file marked “they don’t make films like this any more”. Here is a clip from very near the beginning of the extraordinarily imaginative romantic fantasy A Matter of Life and Death. It’s not quite the opening sequence as titled, though: there’s an astronomically themed preamble before the sequence shown in the clip.
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger and released in 1946, A Matter of Life and Death has remained in most film critics’ lists of top British movies for almost seventy years. If you really want to know why then you’ll have to watch the whole film, but this is a memorable opening to a film if ever there was one.
Incidentally, the splendid poem by Sir Walter Raleigh from which Peter Carter character (played by David Niven) quotes is called The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage. Here it is in full:
GIVE me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope’s true gage; And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body’s balmer, No other balm will there be given; Whilst my soul, like a quiet palmer, Travelleth towards the land of heaven; Over the silver mountains, Where spring the nectar fountains: There will I kiss The bowl of bliss; And drink mine everlasting fill Upon every milken hill: My soul will be a-dry before; But after, it will thirst no more. Then by that happy blestful day, More peaceful pilgrims I shall see, That have cast off their rags of clay, And walk apparelled fresh like me. I’ll take them first To quench their thirst, And taste of nectar suckets, At those clear wells Where sweetness dwells Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
And when our bottles and all we Are filled with immortality, Then the blessed paths we’ll travel, Strowed with rubies thick as gravel; Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors, High walls of coral, and pearly bowers. From thence to heavens’s bribeless hall, Where no corrupted voices brawl; No conscience molten into gold, No forged accuser bought or sold, No cause deferred, nor vain-spent journey ; For there Christ is the King’s Attorney, Who pleads for all without degrees, And he hath angels, but no fees. And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, ‘Gainst our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and then we live.
Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader, Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder! Thou giv’st salvation even for alms ; Not with a bribèd lawyer’s palms. And this is my eternal plea To him that made heaven, earth, and sea, That, since my flesh must die so soon, And want a head to dine next noon, Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread, Set on my soul an everlasting head. Then am I ready, like a palmer fit; To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
The day dawns with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed – my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy-
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.
It seems again that it is time to learn, In this untiring, crumbling place of growth To which, for the time being, I return. Now plainly in the mirror of my soul I read that I have looked my last on youth And little more; for they are not made whole That reach the age of Christ.
Below my window the awakening trees, Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced Suffering their brute necessities, And how should the flesh not quail that span for span Is mutilated more? In slow distaste I fold my towel with what grace I can, Not young and not renewable, but man.
For reasons not necessary to explain I just found this little video someone made to go with a rendition of Walking to a Farm by Ivor Cutler, who accompanies himself on harmonium, and was quite surprised to see a few images of Jodrell Bank on the way. That tenuous connection with astronomy, and the fact that I’ve been too busy today to think of anything else, convinced me that I should post it on this here blog:
Most readers of this blog will be familiar with the form of Japanese poetry known as Haiku. I’ve even had a go at producing some cosmological Haiku myself. I suspect rather fewer will have come across another form known as Tanka. Being 31 syllables long rather than the 17 of Haiku, these are not quite as short but still quite a challenge to write. They comprise 5 lines with a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern of syllables. I’m told by Japanese friends that Tanka are specifically written to celebrate a special event or to capture the mood of a particular moment. Here is an exquisite example by a famous poet called Otomo No Yakamochi:
From outside my house, only the faint distant sound of gentle breezes wandering through bamboo leaves in the long evening silence.
I’ve had a go at composing a couple of Tanka to do with specific moments in cosmology. Here’s one about the epoch of recombination:
An electron finds a proton and marries it; they make hydrogen. Simultaneous weddings free light across the cosmos.
I was talking to some students about the spherical collapse model so here’s a Tanka for that:
I was more dense than my surroundings, expanded more slowly, then stopped. Now I must start to collapse; soon I shall virialize.
Further attempts welcome through the comments box!
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In the Dark 