“Beautiful writing. Each word pulls you towards the next in effortless momentum. Very much enjoy your work.”
– Mark Peter Beeson
“I love your blog! You write so beautifully.”
– Oliver Ryan
It may be down to the fact that I’m listening to – no: immersed in – Counting Crows a lot, at the moment (a very extended moment that has been absorbing me for many, many days): but there seems to be a preternaturally large number of black birds flecking, piercing, spiralling, twisting and weaving the air, at the moment. (That phrase again.)
I watch, and am become like a sparrow
That is alone upon the house-top.
– Psalm 102:7
It may have happened a million times. Or it may have happened just this once. Not that it matters. Not to me. Not really. But to the birds, almost certainly. Preeminently the lone shadow which still sings… – Shakespeare’s “substance of a grief” made manifest.
Seven tsunamis of grief
The land is dry
And yet the waves come
Silenced as sun
And high as pain
Soundless to hide
Their beginning
The land is clear
And yet the waves come
Unmade as breath
And torn as faith
Formless to hide
Their fashioning
The land is deep
And yet the waves come
Ever as air
And light as flame
Weightless to hide
Their strengthening
The land is hard
And yet the waves come
Stoppered as wind
And brave as tree
Placeless to hide
Their happening
The land is high
And yet the waves come
Darkened as moon
And bright as night
Guiltless to hide
Their mastering
The land is walled
And yet the waves come
Driven as time
And forced as rain
Ceaseless to fault
Their bettering
The land is dust
And yet the waves come
Ravished as death
And barbed as life
Hopeless to hide
Their ending
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
– Shakespeare: The Tempest (V.i.88-94)
As with so much horticultural minutiae, it was Felix – still not yet accustomed to having the run of the garden (or – as he must see it – patrolling ‘his’ domain) – who first spotted the tiny creature, and then alerted me (his unrealized chaperon) to its hovering presence; swiftly (and coincidentally) followed by The Guardian’s consistently high-quality Country diary column. I say “tiny”… – but the “creature” in question has a big name in so many respects: “Bombylius major, the large or dark-edged bee‑fly”. Nevertheless, it is small. Yet another of nature’s brilliant and beautiful works of precision engineering, and perfect, startling, purpose. [Bee-flies are sometimes called “humble-flies”. But never, sadly, “humble-bees”… – an eponym reserved for bumble-bees: who, if their buzz (or hum) is anything to go by, are actually quite assertive!]
As is so often the case, the body was in virtually flawless condition: the only clue as to its demise the dull eye (ordinarily… extra-ordinarily brilliant yet pale with cheeky inquisitiveness and intelligence) hanging loosely from its socket – seemingly beseeching me for help that could never come. Even two days later – when no-one, no-thing, had been to claim it: neither fox nor magpie; buzzard nor kite – it remained impeccably embalmed in its lignite sheen: and so I carefully gathered it from the verge – the weight in my hand remarkable for its lightness (as if the departure of its life-spark or soul had rendered it hollow) – and laid it carefully in its temporary resting place. Normally, we would have buried it in a quiet spot in the garden. But times are not normal: so I swaddled it, instead – muttering a few thoughts of ritual respect and regret… – in a large workaday carrier bag; and then placed it, heartbreakingly, in our green council compost bin.
And then – suddenly; startlingly; steadfastly… – it is Sunday. The chilling, seemingly fixed north-north-easterly – ferrying in yet one more ferocious (but not this time vacuous) official foreboding of its own, in the form of a frigid wind-speed alert… – seemingly purifying the pavement of all pedestrians. All the silver/grey/black cars, however, immune to its volitions, are stationary: as they still – thankfully – remain locked to their owners’ homes – many warmed with the rainbows and soft toys that demonstrate love, hope, and temporary happiness. [Andrà tutto bene. “All will be fine.” (We wish. Fervently.)]
The cooling breeze – the cooling day – it brings is concretely cleaner; and, as I circumambulate the churchyard (the building at its heart now closed even to such prayer), I launch my atheist’s supplication quietly upstream: craving continuing clarity, and everlasting expanded green spaces to breathe within. At the exact instant I traverse the main, southern entrance, the air resonates with the midday chimes. I feel blessed. Perhaps this presages something. But… – and I hesitate…. Benevolent… or… the other kind…?
I choose the former; and ramble onwards.
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
– Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus (Scene III)
Every day is Sunday now. Lawnmowers hum in the low sun like the reinvigorated bees that surround them, joyous in the warm spring light. Pelotons of mouthy mamils speed perilously through the village, leaning inattentively around busy, sometimes blind bends. Small happy huddles of prattling people descend from the windmill in their mudsome wellies. And yet a peculiar – (mostly) car free? – silence presses sharply on my eardrums more painfully than any aeronautic descent. This time it is my mind – my soul – tumbling rapidly (once more) towards perdition.
