I’m still working myself into the summer routine, and doing pretty well, I think. Starting the programme in a heatwave may seem to be ambitious but if I can cope with it now then I have high hopes that I’ll be able to cope with it all the way through. Graham, bless him, doesn’t expect too much and is perfectly happy at the thought of needing to give the place a good bottoming at the end of September.
Yesterday I got through the laundry without collapse. I think, in the interests of economy, I shall aim to wear clothes through the summer that can be washed together. I had four loads to do, all of them half-loads, and that offends me.
Still working through “The Tudors”, though I watched only one episode yesterday–the one where Cardinal Wolsey is shown as taking his own life. Shaky history, that, but good drama.
Today it’s hot again. Not too much in the way of direct sun but hot even so. And if the thin hazy cloud breaks then we’ll get a jolly good roasting once more. I do love summer, even now. It breaks my heart to have to close the blinds and draw curtains against the heat of the day, from late morning to mid-afternoon, but the system works and, with the house fans and careful attention to fluid intake, I’m doing fine. No more working white under the sun for me, I’m afraid.
It’s as well to write poems of experience when one is young, I think. Later in life, the hair may grey but the poems live on:
Chains of blindness
Tell me who I am.
I am the one who moved, white under the sun,
to make the deep well weep,
returning its crystal tears
to the summer-salted earth.
Tell me who I am.
I am the one who, moving into darkness,
sat alone in the shadowed room,
took a rough supper of oil rich bread
and held this ageless book to the light.
Tell me who I am.
I am the one whose eyes,
tracing Sophocles’ care worn metre,
followed the lines through sightless mists
to map the destinies that tied
love blinded mother to self-blinded son.
Tell me who I am.
I am the one who, emboldened by distance,
besought blind Oedipus
to join me in his chains,
to rework within my eyes the world
in shame and piercing pain
he ceased to see.
Tell me who I am.
I am the one who, hiding in darkened wings,
heard the sobbing in the night
and breathed the hot horse leathers of
leader-seeking fighting men
moving perplexed in Thebes.
Tell me who I am.
I am the one who sought destiny in shadows,
cast stones blindly to test my fate,
held wetted fingers to the air,
sought the lines of sorrow in which to dwell,
tasted the sadness I should sing.
Tell me who I am.
London 1967
reworked Somerset 1997
Yup. Write ‘em, save ‘em, and then when the shadows fall they still burn bright.
