I collected some prettiness from our garden to make a small bouquet to take to our Dear friend, Ti. In it there was a branch of Crinodendron Hookerarium, some Clematis Montana, two kinds of Pittosporum, some beautifully scented Choisya Ternata Apple Blossom and a few Spanish Bluebells.
In their developing woodland a few English Bluebells have arrived. What a joy!
Kaja loved walking there with us, almost disappearing in the long grass.
Kaja
As I am just finishing writing this evening, Radio 4 has just told me that it is International Dylan Thomas Day. I love the works of this amazing poet who died far too young. If you put his name into my search bar you will find many posts with his poems. His book, “Deaths and Entrances” was my first introduction to his poems, bought for me when I was about 11 years old.
‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’ touched me then and still does. It is not as harsh as it sounds. He seems to be asking why one death should be mourned more than another. We are all of equal value.
Never until the mankind making Bird beast and flower Fathering and all humbling darkness Tells with silence the last light breaking And the still hour Is come of the sea tumbling in harness And I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead And the synagogue of the ear of corn Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound Or sow my salt seed In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn The majesty and burning of the child’s death. I shall not murder The mankind of her going with a grave truth Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath With any further Elegy of innocence and youth. Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter, Robed in the long friends, The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water Of the riding Thames. After the first death, there is no other.