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Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows

There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air
Stilled, silvered as water in a glass
Nothing is big or far.
The small shrew chitters from its wilderness
Of grassheads and is heard.
Each thumb-sized bird
Fits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good colour.

Cloudrack and owl-hollowed willows slanting over
The bland Granta double their white and green
World under the sheer water
And ride that flux at anchor, upside down.
The punter sinks his pole.
In Byron’s pool
Cattails part where the tame cygnets steer.

It is a country on a nursery plate.
Spotted cows revolve their jaws and crop
Red clover or gnaw beetroot
Bellied on a nimbus of sun-glazed buttercup.
Hedging meadows of benign
Arcadian green
The blood-berried hawthorn hides its spines with white.

Droll, vegetarian, the water rat
Saws down a reed and swims from his limber grove,
While the students stroll or…

last night I had a dream

falling leaves swirled

and the smell of campfire

as I walked alone

down a darkened alley

my mind on thoughts

other than the present

at some point

the street lights came on

and you spoke to me

it was all in my head

but you were speaking

and I could hear you

as I listened to catch every word

my face felt wet

and I woke

with my pillow damp

and my heart empty

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: 
Something else is alive 
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star: 
Something more near 
Though deeper within darkness 
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow 
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf; 
Two eyes serve a movement, that now 
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow 
Between trees, and warily a lame 
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye, 
A widening deepening greenness,
 Brilliantly, concentratedly, 
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox 
It enters the dark hole of the head. 
The window is starless still; the clock ticks, 
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998)

This poem was included in ‘The…

Clip from film of three (?) Jewish men, one sporting Hitler moustache and a goatee. (YouTube)

This video of Berlin made in 1927 – halfway between World War I and World War II – by German filmmaker Walter Ruttman, takes viewers through a day in the life of the metropolis, from morning to noon to night. Every slice of German society from high to low is documented, clip by clip, with a sound track rising or falling in tempo with the upbeat or downbeat scenes rolling by. The colorization retains the feel of the historic black and white. A sense of foreboding overcasts much of the film, whether the scenes are happy or sad. I’ve never seen a more subtle evocation of an entire culture and society, and this portrait of the Weimar Republic heralds the coming storm without pity.

As the day opens, shots of a train, trackage and…

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In full grown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

It is spring in Canberra, so these words are very apt. And as it is now Australian spring so May translates to September.

S1 … I do like that second line of the first stanza – like something almost being said – it articulates that almost opening of buds and leaves and gives voice to the season; personifying. The last line of this stanza catches…