A day of America, waking to a radio discussion programme on the involvement of Thoreau with his world and then, early this evening, to another programme on the poetic tradition of the American presidential election. In the latter I was thrilled to hear the voice of Robert Frost, clear and strong in the winter sunshine even if he did complain that the sun was in his eyes. I wasn’t there, but I was watching the Kennedy inauguration ‘live’ on TV, and my clearest, most sparkled memory of the event was of some kind soul holding a paper programme over the old man’s head like an inadequate parasol. It may be the sunlight was an excuse and the old poet had already determined not to use the poem he’d written for the occasion but, rather, to speak the lines of an older, better poem. Better for me, now as then, anyway. The Gift Outright is a great poem. Go see.
I wanted to argue every point made in the Thoreau programme. Distance kept me silent, however, and now politeness keeps me so. There has been a Thoreavian element to my silence almost all of my adult life.
So, then, apart from waking from American dreams to the chattering of my bedside radio (Thoreau would not have approved), all under soft, rainy Welsh skies, we went to Swansea a day early to fetch Graham two more rolls of insulation, three polystyrene boards, and a tube of decorator’s caulk. And for provisions, of course.
My, how it rained. Just before we left the house Graham dashed out to the kerb to bring our rubbish bins in. I opened the back door so’s he could come in to wash his hands.
“Listen to that,” I said, referring to the merry rush of water in the gulleys and gutters.
“Listen to what?”
“The rain, the rain. The sound of Wales.”
“Oh.”
