Familiar dispersals of the day

    ..

    Now as the great paunch of this earth
    Allows its punctuation by seeds, some to be
    Trees, some men walking as trees, so the mind
    Offers its cakes of spore to time in them:
    The sumptuary pleasure-givers living on
    In qualities as sure as taste of hair and mouth,
    White partings of the hair like highways,
    Permutations of a rose, buried beneath us now,
    Under the skin of thinking like a gland
    Discharging its obligations in something trivial:
    Say a kiss, a handclasp: say a stone tear.

  

Lawrence Durrell
The Anecdotes
  xv: In Rhodes, iii
Selected Poems
Peter Porter, editor
op. cit.

How would one know?

Our correspondent landed in

Grenada as I was born; this

he tells us merrily, in his

first published travels. It

would be some 21 years be-

fore I got there, not know-

ing at the time that our

footsteps were so much as

intersecting, walking Grand

Anse toward St George's, as

the children played in the

silent sea. Some of my fav-

ourite, sweetest pictures,

I took with my earliest M,

of their splashing in the

tide as if to wake it up;

and it's my guess that he

did, too, with probably a

iii-f model. But he was in

Grenada as a landfall in a

Leeward Islands checklist

in his post-war travels in

the Caribbean; and I was

there because a rowing mate

in freshman crew had plant-

ed dreams of the island in

my mind, as we would haul

back up to Commons for our

dinner after dark. Travels

follow from affections al-

most as bananas succeeding

themselves upon the branch,

re-enacting flowerings. 

Did I know what to expect?

Yes, but what's it like?

Well, it's light, like con-

fetti. It falls out of the

sky and blows about in the

wind. It's terribly cold,

and when it settles it re-

sembles cassava or mashed

potatoes. Your feet leave

marks on it as though you

were treading on sand, and

you can make balls of it,

or even snowmen. It is so

heavy it sometimes breaks

the branches of trees. It's

deep and crisp and even ...

I'm sorry. I don't get it,

maan. I don't get it at all.

Not what it's really like.

Sir Patrick Leigh-Fermor, DSO, OBE

The Traveller's Tree

  A Journey through the Caribbean Islands

New York Review Books, 2011©

i - iii  Tom Barker

Chistmas Eve rising

           Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise,

           From hill or steaming lake, dusky or grey,

           Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold

           ..

If one were to imagine all

the capabilities of language

in advance, it's doubtful if

we'd reach Milton. On Christ-

mas Eve I tend to keep a com-

forting practice, of sitting

up with a snifter of Scotch

to read from Dryden's Aeneid,

but poetry comes up earlier

to me this year, as pressing

its case with morning coffee.

I spent the previous evening,

tossing and turning over where

I had read of the impressions

conveyed to me by this anony-

mous photograph at an elegant

website; but as is often the

case with me, this is why my

dog and I go out upon a dawn,

to rebuild as with the day.

The rather wonderful British

scholar, Alexandra Harris, re-

minds us that John Milton's

Morning Hymn in Book V of his

Paradise Lost was the first po-

etical work ever cited by Tur-

ner in a canvas he presented

to the Royal Academy (1798),

which may or may not have en-

tered Wordworth's mind as he

read from it to Dorothy, over-

looking the valley of Brathay,

"[when] it seemed we had nev-

er before felt deeply the pow-

er of the Poet" (1810).

If there had seemed to be dis-

couragements in power's resort

to language in this year, I'd

not pretend that Milton were

necessary, for allaying them.

Anyone with our slenderer ac-

quaintance of its protections,

has been obliged to heed them.

But this was a poet who plain-

ly believed it of poetry, that

dawn is its manifesting moment.

Something like strength, more

than power, distinguishes this

perception and its fulfillment.

What one feels, is its nerve.

John Milton, a new winter mor-

ning, walking with one's dog.

John Milton

Paradise Lost

  V, 185-187

1667

Alexandra Harris

Weatherland

  Writers and Artists

  under English Skies

Thames & Hudson, 2015©

ii  Leonardo da Vinci

    A copse of trees

    Chalk on paper

    1502

    Collection HM Queen Elizabeth II

"Nothing ever dies."

I am indebted to the Belgian, 
Pierre Ryckmans, writing in
The New York Review as Simon
Leys, for this quotation from
the recently published letters
of George Orwell, writing as
Eric Blair. I am indebted to
his selectivity and to his
gift for building the predic-
ate for this summary state-
ment, so that I could cite it
for this extraordinary portrait.


Orwell's remark, from his final
illness to a sweetheart from
his youth, is an escalation,
in the same vein, of an early
confession of one's own, we
forget nothing. I'm very glad
to be reminded, too, of things
I had seen Orwell saying, I do
not want completely to abandon
the world-view I acquired in
childhood .. I think that by
retaining one's childhood love
of such things as trees, fishes,
butterflies and toads, one makes
a peaceful and decent future a
little more probable.

Have you seen, today, a more
charming portrait than this one?
I was pitched into something re-
sembling embarrassed enchantment
(whatever that could be) simply to
catch it from the corner of my eye
on a brisk tour d'horison of the
web as I awaited the debate in New 
Hampshire. I do not expect the
question to be asked, What do you
think of toads; I do not expect 
serious journalism tonight.


But I expect this question from 
every estimable moral voice ever
to open its mouth, from Heraclitus
to Beethoven, to Einstein to my
friend Tassos' infant nephew, pos-
sibly now walking. I'd interrogate
anyone who sought power to shape
the experience of this life, with 
this question.

Simon Leys

The New York Review

  of Books, LVIII, 9

  The Intimate Orwell

NYREV, Inc., 2011©

Silvano Mangano