Isn’t that the science of life?
I do notice but I turn away. I turn away from the sharp points of beauty that arrow me through. Sharp beauty able to pierce the thick purple hide. I am in hiding from the slings and arrows of outrageous beauty. It is outrageous that there should be the sepia fox on the tones of snow, his brush sudden-red, his brush shed-blood red on the unmarked snow. Behind him, the Chase, the horses in thick vapour, their mounts half risen in perpetual action, the pink coats and the golden horn that lose their colours in the early setting sun. Dusk frees the fox. The badger wears his night-stripes and snouts among the stars.
Nature is excess. She is beyond the mean. A single rose-hip bursts in praise. What to do with rain, with snow, with sleet, with leaves, with comets, with hail, with lightning, with apples, pears and plums, nature shaking out her excess, the gravity-delighting objects that spill around my head?
Get an umbrella. A folding pocket-sized all weather friend to bounce off the booming world and keep me dry when I should be drenched through. Shall I be dry? Dust-dry, dried flower neat, pressed and labelled, in the right section, saved from moisture and rot. I can live like that, under the rim of consciousness, in the nylon shelter of my own thoughts, safe from beauty’s harm. I think therefore I am. Does that mean ‘I feel therefore I’m not’? But only through feeling can I get at thinking. Those things that move me challenge me. Only a seismic shock can re-order the card index of habit, prejudice and other people’s thoughts that I call my own.
In spite of fear, there are talismans I keep, pebbles I turn over in my hand. Remembered stones whose mineral surface is pocketed with gold.
Autumn in a London square, the still-hung air round the Yew, pink-barked. A terrier routs the leaves. The black-yapping dog and the Yew pink-barked. Dog, Yew, the plane tree leaves in piles of tan and the café where the coffee steams.
I bought a cup, burnt myself, but glad of coffee and money to buy it. Glad of the cardboard smelling steam and this small space on this wooden bench.
A woman passes and is gone. The birds take turns at the fountain. I have taken my turn at coffee, at bench, both remain, not me. Even now, when I know the moment, the moment is gone. The clock won’t stop, though I do, or seem to, holding the coffee as a shield against time. I want to walk so slowly through the square, to be continually walking through the square, the dog still yapping and the Yew pink-barked.
The tourists queued outside the British Museum.
The soft air and the hard path. The air caught on the wrought-iron railings and the path buried under the leaves. An old man spiked them away. Familiar in London squares, leaves and soft air, the last roses splashed upon the stem. A dun sparrow snatched a crimson worm. Why is it painful to me, that day, though long gone and unreturnable? Painful, so that I slow my steps on the busy streets, pausing as one who has forgotten something important. I have forgotten something important; forgotten how to look at pictures, the unpainted beauty of the everyday. This now, the quality that the artist can take, but which is always visible, if I will see. This now, itself, not the shock of the new, but the shock of the familiar, suddenly seen.
Long trains leaving. The cathedral vault of the station used to receive an incense of steam, now it makes a living sacrifice out of pigeons caught in the electricity terminals. No-one looks up at the blackened birds voltaged out of life and remnanted among the girders. Underneath the dead birds the passengers to and fro. The to and fro of tired bodies pushed on invisible lines.
But outside the train takes the cutting in a scythe of light. The crescent curve of the train mows the houses as it passes, the houses disappear behind the moon metal blade of the silver train.
The train, vibrating in its own power, as gun dogs do, rushes for the
I do notice but I turn away. I turn away from the sharp points of beauty that arrow me through. Sharp beauty able to pierce the thick purple hide. I am in hiding from the slings and arrows of outrageous beauty. It is outrageous that there should be the sepia fox on the tones of snow, his brush sudden-red, his brush shed-blood red on the unmarked snow. Behind him, the Chase, the horses in thick vapour, their mounts half risen in perpetual action, the pink coats and the golden horn that lose their colours in the early setting sun. Dusk frees the fox. The badger wears his night-stripes and snouts among the stars.
Nature is excess. She is beyond the mean. A single rose-hip bursts in praise. What to do with rain, with snow, with sleet, with leaves, with comets, with hail, with lightning, with apples, pears and plums, nature shaking out her excess, the gravity-delighting objects that spill around my head?
Get an umbrella. A folding pocket-sized all weather friend to bounce off the booming world and keep me dry when I should be drenched through. Shall I be dry? Dust-dry, dried flower neat, pressed and labelled, in the right section, saved from moisture and rot. I can live like that, under the rim of consciousness, in the nylon shelter of my own thoughts, safe from beauty’s harm. I think therefore I am. Does that mean ‘I feel therefore I’m not’? But only through feeling can I get at thinking. Those things that move me challenge me. Only a seismic shock can re-order the card index of habit, prejudice and other people’s thoughts that I call my own.
In spite of fear, there are talismans I keep, pebbles I turn over in my hand. Remembered stones whose mineral surface is pocketed with gold.
Autumn in a London square, the still-hung air round the Yew, pink-barked. A terrier routs the leaves. The black-yapping dog and the Yew pink-barked. Dog, Yew, the plane tree leaves in piles of tan and the café where the coffee steams.
I bought a cup, burnt myself, but glad of coffee and money to buy it. Glad of the cardboard smelling steam and this small space on this wooden bench.
A woman passes and is gone. The birds take turns at the fountain. I have taken my turn at coffee, at bench, both remain, not me. Even now, when I know the moment, the moment is gone. The clock won’t stop, though I do, or seem to, holding the coffee as a shield against time. I want to walk so slowly through the square, to be continually walking through the square, the dog still yapping and the Yew pink-barked.
The tourists queued outside the British Museum.
The soft air and the hard path. The air caught on the wrought-iron railings and the path buried under the leaves. An old man spiked them away. Familiar in London squares, leaves and soft air, the last roses splashed upon the stem. A dun sparrow snatched a crimson worm. Why is it painful to me, that day, though long gone and unreturnable? Painful, so that I slow my steps on the busy streets, pausing as one who has forgotten something important. I have forgotten something important; forgotten how to look at pictures, the unpainted beauty of the everyday. This now, the quality that the artist can take, but which is always visible, if I will see. This now, itself, not the shock of the new, but the shock of the familiar, suddenly seen.
Long trains leaving. The cathedral vault of the station used to receive an incense of steam, now it makes a living sacrifice out of pigeons caught in the electricity terminals. No-one looks up at the blackened birds voltaged out of life and remnanted among the girders. Underneath the dead birds the passengers to and fro. The to and fro of tired bodies pushed on invisible lines.
But outside the train takes the cutting in a scythe of light. The crescent curve of the train mows the houses as it passes, the houses disappear behind the moon metal blade of the silver train.
The train, vibrating in its own power, as gun dogs do, rushes for the
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