What a truly extra-extraordinary week we have had here in Blighty. Waking day after long day to golden syrupy amber light. first squeezing round the edges of the blinds and then pouring in, pools of honey collecting in the folds of the bed covers.
I have been stupefied by this sudden wealth. All seems heightened, as though the world is suddenly sharper, magnified and it has never looked more glorious. Time seems stretched, elongated such golden days that seem endless and frozen in time. Each morning I have had that fizzy, frilly, summer-saulty tummy that I felt as child as the summer holidays stretched before me. The feeling you have when you head out early into a day full of so much promise.
Waking early, I have been striding out with Mr.Boodle on ever longer walks, my heart soaring in the warmth bouncing from the baked soil. The fields are golden stubble now and the leaves are beginning to change into their Autumn hues.I have been very quiet, dazed I think or perhaps a little drunk on the light, but bursting with joy inside!
My thoughts have turned to Thomas Hardy, William Barnes and Vaughan-Williams and I think perhaps I have felt a little of their rapture at the English landscape.
On Sunday I heard a poem on the radio by Sylvia Townsend-Warner and it seemed to me to be the perfect epitaph for this strange glorious week. Summing up beautifully my own response, especially the transient nature of each passing second and not wanting to miss a molecule of it....
GO THE LONG WAY, THE LONG WAY HOME
SYLVIA TOWNSEND-WARNER
Go the long way, the long way home
Over this gate the leads where the three lanes meeting, delay
Look well at that field of hay
Eye closely the drilled loam
Finger the springing corn
Count every petal of the hedgerows and the guelder rose
Under the bosom of the blossomed elder
Stay, linger, browse deep on all this green and all this growing
Slant cheek to the sweet air
With deep greetings survey the full leaf boughs, like water flowing
The corn waves hurrying uphill as the wind blows
Look overhead into the blue
Look round watch this bird fly and that bird settle
with slow treading and sure greet the assuring ground
Go slowly, for slowly goes this midsummer day
And this is the last time you will come this way
Go the long way, the long way home
Aye and when you arrive and the sighing gate falls to
Go slowly, go heedfully your garden through
Breathe in the spice pinks
Turn face up to the soft ripe rose that wags aloft
Nod to the old rake, rub thumb across spades edge
Measure the potato hills and the tall bean rows
Pledge cherry and currant bush
Pledge lily and lily leaf spear
And rebel the nettles waving along the hedge
Look closely, look well, see how your garden grows
Ponder yourself, even enter the secret cell of this years honeycomb
Look long, for long has this been yours, long been dear
This is the last time you will stand here
Go the long way, the long way home
Though you are weary hasten not ghost to ground
Tarry this last hour out
Take your last look around
Greet finally the earth, greet leaf and root and stock
Stand in your last hour, poised like the dandelion clock
Frail ghost of the gaudy raggle-taggle that you were
Stand up oh homing phantom
Stand up intact and declare the goodness of earth
The greatest good you have found
Er the wind jolts you and you vanish like the foam.
And now? The spell has broken, I think this last week I may have been visited by Rumplestiltskin! He has had me spinning golden thread........
I too have been taking the long way.........
.....home xXx
