A Quiet Hymn to England
Where memory and music lead me home
Awakening to deep oval sounds
of a resonant cello
somewhere in the distance—
the fifths carry vibrations
over lark and pine.
Was it Betjeman who told me
my lips were made for sin?
Or perhaps it was the curve
of my darling Elizabeth—
breaking our silence
as the lemonlight horizon
languorously arcs. Her pelvis,
a perfumed lattice
where I rest my weary head.
In these mist-filled autumnal mornings
there is a veil of unknowing.
These shrouded days
are heavy with possibility.
I once welcomed the void.
But this aging mind is restless—
for Middlesex
and licorice fields,
where Chaucer’s mice
climb barley stalks,
and England’s fair earth
returns to itself once more.
We stoop over timeless bodies
and if I follow the dandelion pappus
to their burial chamber
will I be renewed
at the light’s edge?
The imagery of “Chaucer’s mice” and “licorice fields” roots it in something old and earthy, while “lemonlight” and “dandelion pappus” give it a dreamy lift. A hymn, yes, but also a quiet reckoning, like standing in the fog of your own past and realizing it still smells like the ache of what can’t be touched again.
I think I saw this once before. I liked it better this time, enough to say that it raised in my mind editorial possibilities quite possibly disagreeable to yours. But possibilities, Mr. Allum, are intrinsically fickle, which compels me to say no more. Keep going. It's the only way to get anywhere, except that today I read how Nietszche has written how TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE. More promise in lace pelvice? Yes and no. I'm both sure and unsure, a negative capability. As Mallarme so wrenching put it over several pages, A CAST OF THE DICE DOES NOT ELIMINATE CHANCE.