From “Vacillation”
My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
-W.B. Yeats
We are celebrating the Feast of the Visitation on March 30; this is the commemoration of the visit the Virgin Mary made to her cousin Elizabeth, seemingly soon after the the Annunciation, because the Scripture says she “went with haste.” Elizabeth was also expecting a baby, the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John.
Malcolm Guite has written a sonnet for the feast, which you can find in the anthology Sounding the Seasons. In the West the feast is kept in May.
THE VISITATION
Here is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth with all called ‘past their prime’
They sing today for all the great unsung
Women who turned eternity to time
Favoured of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets who bring the best in us to birth.
-Malcolm Guite
DAYS
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
– Philip Larkin
One of my favorites will do for a spring poem. I don’t have much to say about my garden pictures, so I looked through old posts for verse to accompany them, and it appears that springtime has generally found me too busy to read poetry. It’s happening again.
The last day of November I was soddenly planting out bulbs and annuals in the front yard and wishing things were different; I had not wanted to be planting myself; that’s why I’d hired the new landscaper, to help me. It also seemed too late to be setting out those plants. Well, now I am awfully glad for everything, and the flowers that are proliferating at this point.
In the back, more surprises. For one, I didn’t think the irises I transplanted last fall would bloom yet, but they have lots of buds. And a disappointing surprise is that the daffodils from the package I bought are not as advertised:
One of my already blooming new perennials is this member of the gooseberry family:
At the moment a cold wind is banging the gate and rain is coming on. I’m wishing I hadn’t arranged for help to clean the fountain today, and glad I took these pictures yesterday and before. By the time the storm passes more things will be blooming, and a new day will come and wake us — a day to be happy in.
Continue reading Spring ups and downs.
STAY HOME
I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man’s life
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
-Wendell Berry
Gladsome Lights 