An Illustration To Dante by Fleur Adcock

I have always loved this watercolour by Rossetti and I recently brought a 2nd hand book of collected poems from 1973-1974 and this wonderful poem by Fleur Adcock leaped out at me, because I knew exactly which painting she was talking about. The poem says so much, about Paolo and Francesca, Dante, Rossetti and Ruskin and the poet herself as she compares the lovers to her own experience and as a reader I recognise that tenderness in the painting, being lost in the moment of love.The poem is wise and witty, observant and personal.

They float in a sea of whitish blobs-
fire, is it? It could have been
hail, said Ruskin, but Rossetti
'didn't know how to do hail'.
Well, he could do tenderness.
My spine trickles with little white flames.

today is a day to read Rainer Maria Rilke

I am so afraid of people's words.
They describe so distinctly everything:
And this they call dog and that they call house,
here the start and there the end.

I worry about their mockery with words,
they know everything, what will be, what was;
no mountain is still miraculous;
and their house and yard lead right up to God.

I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
That's how you kill.




Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

St Mary Magdalene Church, Croome Court

To have a child, was to gamble with death.

Maria who lived in the 17th Century, with her stillborn son

 

 

 

She died soon after she had delivered him.

She left behind four children, here are two praying for their mother.

Croome Court

St Peter, the church at Pirton, Worcestershire

We were going to Croome Court, pictures of which I will post later, and my mood was blue to say the least. not because of our day out (which was splendid and made everything feel uplifted again) but the subject matter of our conversation, circling debate about someone in my family, anyway the exact is irrelevant, the point is both my husband and I felt quite sad about it.

Then we drove around the corner and I saw this church. I screeched at how beautiful it was had to stop the car to walk around it and touch it. Just bask in it's medieval beauty.

 I love the timber frame tower. It is so honest and unpretentious compared to many churches lifting their stone towers and spires to heavenly glory.

After ten minutes with the church, with my family smiling and waving from the car and grinning with loving indulgence at my affection for old buildings, all my tension and anxiety about things I can't change or fix vanished. I felt all these  worries didn't really amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

The only thing I can do is make my own little family content. All the bones in the walls and the churchyard were saying, 'Be happy, life is a brief whisper and then it is gone.'

Scent

The dog walks at my calf, soft mouthed,

Completely empty of thought beyond

Pleasing me.

The earth steams,

Heated from the sun reclining on the horizon.

It is red like the corpse of a smashed fox

glimpsed upon the tarmac.

green verge,

grey road,

bright bloody fox

combined together

(though red is the colour

the retina is stained with,

and the mind will be able to recall it,

at moments like these,

when trying to describe the colour

of the morning sun.)

Wet legged from long grass,

naked beneath puritan, white nightdress.

Bare feet, boots pushed on in haste to walk

this eager dog.

Canine nose detecting everything.

The rabbit that fled from our footfalls,

The birds and mice that worried the stems

for seeds last night.

Ghosts of ourselves

walking yesterday and days before.

The dog knows my identity; female,

Pack leader, in season again.

The moon waned,

as the scent of pregnancy faded.

Comfort in the dogs blank loyalty;

The knowledge that at least there was one

other witness to a brief life. 

 

The Gulf Stream (1899) Winslow Homer