Far from the Madding(maddening even) Crowd
But now from me hys madding mynd is starte, And woes the Widdowes daughter of the glenne. , Shepheardes Calender (1579)
(A consideration of 'Madding' as used by Spenser in 1579 and Thomas Hardy in his first book, "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874); Hardy himself; the influence of Nature on his work by ZHV; and some poems by me - TTV)
Mad men may be pitied, tolerated even restrained. It is incumbent on us all to empathise and try to understand, whenever the condition, in all its various guises, evidences itself - always mindful that it may afflict anyone, at any time, even the most sane. What you should never do however is afford the insane the power over others, let alone millions.
That it would seem is what the population of the United States and its political system, has allowed to happen. They have put a seriously deranged, egotistical individual in charge of their country, with serious implications for all the others, affecting literally hundreds of millions of souls.
Not that this is anything new. Professor Jeffrey Sachs has described America, over more than half a century, as being a "brutal imperialist bully", and Trump is only the latest of a plethora of 'emperors' that society and system has thrown up, all claiming to be 'peace-makers' but somehow causing carnage around the world that 'western allies' have been happy to wink at or actively support, the most recent and egregious example being Gaza.
However, now Canadian and European sovereignty has been threatened, suddenly those same leaders have woken up to a threat coming from an unexpected quarter. It has found them floundering. Could a long-term member of NATO and the UN actually be threatening its allies with military intervention or even invasion? Amazingly the answer appears to be, "Yes"!
Canada and Denmark have it seems, drawn a line in the ice, when they refused to draw one in the sand of the Middle East and North Africa or the jungles of Central America. There is an old aphorism that may be appropriate: You should never tell a King what he has the power to do; only the things that he can't. A tyrant treats advice with contempt: sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn't. History provides many examples. But who is advising President Trump and is he amenable to it antway?
This is where the madding quote from Spencer's work, actually a homage to Queen Elizabeth I, adds a certain piquancy to the topic. It is spoken by the shepherd Hobbinoll, who is lamenting that his close companion, Colin Clout (Spenser's avatar), in a frenzied, infatuated state of mind, has abandoned their friendship for a new, unrequited love. described as "the Widowes daughter of the glenne". Hobbinoll mourns that Colin has stopped playing his pipe and singing songs, breaking their companionship for the sake of a "madding" or frenzied love for a stranger or foreigner. Who in the current turn of world events might fill those apocryphal rolls I wonder?
Who can forget the British Prime Minister's embarrasing and humiliating performance in the White House and his staunch support for American actions despite their illegitimacy? For whatever reason, personal or diplomatic, Starmer signed up to immoral and illegal US/Trump policies and actions in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Mexico.
Starmer used the King and an 'unprecidented' invitation of a second State Visit to cosy up to Trump. The King is now committed to a return trip to join in celebrations around 250 years of American 'independance' from the Crown, this at a time when an invasion of Greenland and Canada is somewhat more than a theoretical possibility! Ironies of ironies.
Now on two issues at least, Starmer appears to have grown some of those indispensible spherical things! Defiantly he has opposed the threats against Greenland and by implication Denmark and the EU, saying the political future of the island is for the Danes and Greenlanders alone. Now, following Trumps NATO remarks, he has pointedly described them as "insulting and frankly appalling".
He has called on Trump to withdraw the slur and "apologise". To which, knowing the madding state of Trump's mind and behaviour, there is little likelihood of it happening. What we may be witnessing is the end of the affair between the two - if ever there was one - with possible unforeseen wider implications. 'Cast not a Clout till May is out', may be an old example of the modern day 'precautionary principle'. Yet again Spenser's Shepheardes Calender springs to life and we are left wondering who the 'widdowes daughter of the glenne' might be in the current transactional, international scenario? (TTV)
Thomas Hardy
So now back to Hardy (What a diversion Spenser proved to be!) Most who read this piece will be familiar with Hardy's life and work but for those not, a few observations. As with any life, we cannot but help draw parallels and points of convergence with our own.
He lived a long and creative life as one of the greatest British poets and writers of fiction. (So sadly no 'convergence' there!) He was born not far from Dorchester to skilled but working-class parents in 1840. His humble origins and lack of status later bothered him and may have frustrated to some extent his acceptance in society and acclaim. (He was nominated twenty-five times for the Nobel literary prize without success!)
The Victorian stratified and fairly rigid class system undoubtedly influenced his attitude to it and the social issues of the day which condemned many to poverty and destitution - particularly abandoned women and the old - characters who appear in his novels. In his social influence he may be compared to Charles Kingsley and Charles Dickens.
Kingsley older by twenty one years published The Water Babies' in 1863. Dickens twenty eight years older became a famous author around the time of Hardy's birth. Hardy's work can be distinguised from the former by virtue of its rural setting. Despite the differences, all were witnessing and documenting the profound changes taking place in both urban and rural settings and the emergence of a social conscience and attempts to mitigate the adverse consequences.
Far from the Madding Crowd was Hardy's first published novel in 1874 when he was 34. It was to be the first of five, plus his collected 947 poems, one of which is shown below. Later authors and poets rated him highly, as has the general reading public.
He died in Dorset eighty-seven years later in January 1928 a very wealthy man. He fell in love in Cornwall and married Emma Gifford the same year his first book was published (1874). Although they became estranged in later life, he was deeply affected by her death in 1912 and asked to be buried next to her, fulfilled only in part. Two years later he married his secretary Florence Dugdale who was 39 years his junior.
In 1914 he supported Britain joining the First WW for honour's sake but one gets the impression he may have rued the day he did so. He was a follower of John Stuart Mill's views on freedom, critical of imperialism and a believer in education and internationalism as a bulwark against class division and war.
At school, Far from the Madding Crowd was as I remember it, a set book for 'O' Level GCE. I came to it as a boy brought up in a rural setting to whom even by the nineteen fifties and sixties the themes were still familiar. Horses were still in use, water was drawn from wells, sanitation was basic, candles still employed, telephones and cars scarce.
It was still the tale end of the Agricultural Revolution, in many ways more chiming with Spenser's and Hardy's than today's. That is quite a startling realisation. Sometimes it takes a fallen tree or a medical incident or a foreign holiday to realise how much has changed and how much we now take for granted.
Hardy regretted the changes he witnessed and foretold by Cobbett fifty years before Madding, in the Rural economy and society despite its continuing vibrancy at the time. What would he think of it today? (TTV)
Nature’s Questioning by Thomas Hardy
When I look forth at dawning, pool,
Field, flock, and lonely tree,
All seem to gaze at me
Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;
Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,
As though the master’s ways
Through the long teaching days
Had cowed them till their early zest was overborne.
Upon them stirs in lippings mere
(As if once clear in call,
But now scarce breathed at all) –
‘We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!
Has some Vast Imbecility,
Mighty to build and blend,
But impotent to tend,
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?
Or come we of an Automaton
Unconscious of our pains? . . .
Or are we live remains
Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?
Or is it that some high Plan betides,
As yet not understood,
Of Evil stormed by Good,
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?’
Thus things around. No answerer I. . . .
Meanwhile the winds, and rains,
And Earth’s old glooms and pains
Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh.
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.
HARDY'S USE OF NATURE IN HIS NOVELS
by ZOE VEATER
This essay was the First Prize winner in our
Schools Essay Competition, 1999.
Thomas Hardy has long been renowned for his unique descriptive style
when recreating landscape. The natural world is not only seen to reflect
the characters' emotions, it becomes an integral part of them. It is a
changeable yet eternal force, simultaneously appearing both beautiful
and terrifying, mirroring the lives of those whom it influences. Hardy
also uses his work to show the banishment of the trusted farming
practices in the light of new technology, often to the detriment of the
natural world.
In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the heroine is introduced as an innocent
in her natural setting, "a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by
experience", though this is soon destroyed. Hardy deliberately makes
setting of the incident in the wood ambiguous. The thick fog and
impenetrable darkness blur boundaries and confuse Tess' s feelings. Her
true passionate nature surfaces, the non-judgemental natural world
appearing only as an uncritical bystander. The "webs of vapour" that
surround Tess suggest entrapment, an innocent insect caught in fate's
web, and aid the metamorphoses from a living woman to "nothing but
a pale nebulousness", a spirit of the landscape itself.
Christianity is depicted as foreign and accusatory rather than
forgiving, (the Bible's "staring vermilion words shone forth") showing
the same sympathy to the landscape as the new machines of the
agricultural revolution. Hardy seems to feel that the pagan religion of
nature worship was more apt than that which is presently dominant.
"One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky.
The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like
creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an
earth that was brimming with interest for him". Hardy remarks that
"women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor
nature retain in their souls far more of the pagan fantasy of their remote
forefathers than of the systematised religion taught their race at a later
date".
Tess's "pilgrimage" to Blackmoor Vale is one of new beginnings,
occurring in spring, a time of new life and growth. The air is
described as "clear, bracing, ethereal" and in comparison to the "heavy"
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atmosphere of her home. The natural world physically represents her
inner feelings, the brighter surroundings lifting the weight on her heart.
Hardy uses the vastness of nature to emphasise how small and
unimportant Tess actually is. She is, when standing in an expanse of
meadow, "a fly on a billiard table of indefinite length and of no more
consequence to the surroundings than that fly", emphasising how all
creations are equally lifted bodily like the lid of a pot, letting in at the
earth's edge the coming day".
The stones echo the earlier forest even down to their "glistening gray-
green" appearance. The old respect for the temple is still evident in the
behaviour of the men who have come for her, when they "saw where
she lay, . . . they showed no objection" to letting her sleep. The tableau
created by their stillness mimics that of the stones and even surrounded
with people she remains at ease. Lying on the sacrificial altar she is
presented in the image of a goddess of nature and therefore it seems
fitting that it is the sun that wakes her. "A ray shone upon her
unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her", the
"gesture" seeming gentle and caring. The final image is of a single ray
illuminating an ill-fated child amongst the shadows cast by the humans
and ancient stones alike. This grandiose setting is the ideal resolution
for the pathetic heroine of such a tragic story and the temple finally has
its pagan sacrifice.
In the last chapter, Christianity reasserts itself, just as technology
replaces manual labour. "The sun's rays smiled on pitilessly", appearing
harsh and unyielding in stark contrast to its earlier depictions. The final
thought is that "Justice" was done and the President of the Immortals,
in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. This questioned
justice betrays Hardy's true feelings towards his heroine yet again,
reiterating the sentiment of natural law behind the novels alternative title:
"A Pure Woman".
The Woodlanders depicts a community whose livelihoods revolve
around the natural world and its products. The woodland is described
in the terms of a living being: "skirted trunks with spreading roots whose
mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green gloves" and "on older
trees still than these huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs". The area is
likened to the "depraved crowds of a city slum", with the same basic
qualities being found in each community.
The scene in which Hardy details Giles planting trees, with Marty
aiding him, creates a window into their lives. More is learnt about Giles,
for example he is said to have "a marvellous power of making trees
grow", finding "delight" in his occupation. "Winterbourne's fingers were
endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading the roots of each
little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under which the delicate fibres
all laid themselves out in their proper directions for growth". His talent
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for the work displays an instinctive knowledge and for a moment he
and the sapling become one entity. There is a "sympathy" between them
and the process becomes a symbiosis.
The trees are gifted with consciousness and their personification is
reinforced by "the soft musical breathing", which begins as soon as they
are introduced to the earth, not to cease "night or day till the grown
tree should be felled". This suggests a constant stability found in nature
and the transient quality of human life in comparison. John South' s
obsession with a particular elm is virtually that of a devoted and
worshipping disciple and it is revealed to be the force that is sustaining
him.
One of the most atmospheric scenes in the novel is that of Grace
observing Giles at the cider making in the courtyard of the "Earl of
Wessex". The apple mill and press create the illusion that the orchard
has been transported into the yard and everywhere one is confronted
with autumn's abundance. Language such as "grinding", "wringing" and
"gushed forth", suggests strength and vitality, reflected in the activity
of the characters in the courtyard. The picture is an extension of the
harvest, a meeting of nature and humanity.
Giles epitomises both nature and masculinity. It is suggested that the
fruit and its juice become an integral part of him, "fragments of apple-
rind had alighted upon the brim of his hat . . . while brown pips of the
same fruit were sticking among the down upon his fine round arms and
in his beard".
The smell of the apples so fills the air that it becomes
almost oppressive: "the blue stagnant air of autumn which hung over
everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell". It has the same heady
quality of abundance and warmth as the scene in Tess , yet in this image
the environment is much more controlled. When she arrives, Grace
cannot distinguish between the varieties of apple trees, but when looking
out of her window she recognises "specimens of mixed dates, including
the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbords,
ratherripes and other well-known friends of her ravenous youth".
When Grace and Giles next meet, he is described in both visual and
olfactory terms, "he looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother".
"Autumn's very brother" suggests a closeness, more obvious than that
previously implied. There are reflections of nature's creations in his
whole being; his face is "wheat-colour" and "his eyes are blue as corn-
flowers". Again his garments and skin are covered in the juice and pips
of apples, which seem to have pervaded everything he possesses.
"Everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return
each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have
been born and bred among the orchards".
Grace sees Giles as a gift to her from nature, a being "impersonating
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chivalrous and undiluted manliness . . . arisen out of the earth ready to
her hand" and thus seen as nature's own progeny. "Arisen out of the
earth" suggests the personification of nature as a divine being and later
Giles is thought of as "the fruit-god and wood-god in alternation".
Hardy's novels also often reflect the destructive power in nature.
"Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to
smite the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of
an adversary to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the
wound". These images conjure images of a physical fight, for they have
the same violence and intensity. The trees after the storm are "close
together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds
resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows".
The opening of The Return of the Native is dominated by Hardy's
image of Egdon Heath. It focuses entirely on the landscape, a "vast tract
of unenclosed wild" and humans are seen as nothing more than a
diversion from it. It is said that "the face of the heath by its mere
complexion added half-an-hour to eve" and night appears as a "near
relation" to it. Again, the natural surroundings are personified: "the
sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the
evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly
as the heavens precipitated it".
It is linked more to "winter darkness, tempests and mists" than summer
days and the use of the phrase "Egdon was aroused to reciprocity" conveys
the idea that it actually contributes to these storms. Though seen as a
face, it is inscrutable to mere humans, remaining unchanging through
generations. This serves to remind the reader of the transient quality of
human life, when compared to the constants found in the natural world.
It is suggested that the passing of time has little effect on the heath,
not because it exists outside time, but because it simply pays little
attention to it. Hardy states that both the Domesday Book and Leland
mention this area, "the scene seemed to belong to the ancient world of
the Carboniferous period". It seems to reject virtually all attempts to
cultivate it, Clym finds satisfaction in observing "that in some of the
attempts at reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a
year or two, had receded again in despair the ferns and furze tufts
stubbornly reasserting themselves".
Eustacia is from the first presented as an enigma. The image of her
standing at the summit of the barrow introduces only her silhouette and
she seems to be "the only obvious justification of their outline", it
"amounted only to unity". Unconsciously she is in harmony with her
surroundings, she understands the ways of the heath and is not frightened
by its horrors, "her heedlessness of night, betokened among other things
an utter absence of fear".
Eustacia fights a conscious battle with nature and thus she is forced
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to wage war on her subconscious being. She states she hates nature and
that "the heath is a cruel taskmaster" to her, whereas Clym, in contrast,
is seen as its "product", "permeated with its scenes, with its substance
and with its odours". He is able to adopt his new life as a furze cutter
so completely that "he appeared as a mere parasite of the heath . . .
having no knowledge of anything in the world but fern, furze, heath,
lichens and moss".
Hardy describes a plantation of trees after a storm and they
immediately seem as foreign interlopers on such a place as the heath.
As in The Woodlanders , these trees are anthropomorphised, though in
contrast they are growing in an environment that is totally unfamiliar
to them. The scene is depicted as especially violent; "the wet young
beeches were undergoing amputations, bruises, cripplings and harsh
lacerations from which the wasting sap would bleed for many a day to
come". This image is reminiscent of the carnage usually reported in a
war zone, here the battle rages between the plantation and the elements.
The heath almost appears in league against the alien species; while "at
every onset of the gale convulsive sounds came from the branches, as
if pain were felt", "those gusts which tore the trees merely waved the
furze and heather in a light caress".
When Eustacia enters the night for the final time, its gloom is
described as "funeral"; "all nature seemed clothed in crape". Common
and naturally occurring objects of the heath are suddenly seen as
threatening, "oozing lumps of fleshy fungi ... lay scattered about the
heath like the rotting liver and lungs of some collossal animal". Even
the moon and stars have temporarily been vanquished, "closed up by
rain and cloud to the degree of extinction". The raindrops appear as
"glistening darts" in the candlelight, being in one instant both beautiful
and dangerous and "individual drops" sting like "arrows". The scene is
set perfectly to accommodate Eustacia' s death and Hardy writes "never
was harmony more perfect that that between the chaos of her mind and
the chaos of the world without".
Only very rarely is Eustacia mentioned in conjunction with light and
it is only in death that she becomes radiant. She becomes a copy of the
moon "who as she lay there still in death eclipsed all her living phases.
Pallor did not include all the quality of the complexion, which seemed
more than whiteness; it was almost light".
The final book reinstates light and the closing image of Clym standing
on the barrow is calmer, yet it lacks so many of the dramatic and
atmospheric qualities that make the earlier scene of Eustacia so emotive.
The environment moulded itself to reflect the passion and inner struggle
that Eustacia experienced and without her presence nature becomes "but
a fraction of a thing".
Simply by looking at three of Hardy's texts, it is possible to
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Bark and Scream by Tim Veater
(In fond memory of A F and J S)
The dog fox 'barks', the vixen 'screams'
Across the dark December night,
From far-off fields, the eirie sound of
'Four-legs' searching for a mate.
Not pain but plaintive sigh, as nature plays its game,
A yearning, searching, cry; primitive and slight.
The book she borrowed, lent,
Yielded up some long-forgotten images
A moment frozen twenty years before.
Three people laugh one Christmas
Long ago, but now the two, no more.
As foxes know too well, you cannot cheat the hunt.
Or memories of death's dark door.
Your fate is fixed by nature's cruel might
And love is but a faltering flicker
Of the candle, when the power is out.
For we can only scream like foxes in the night,
Bark like a Dog or like a Vixen call.
Wiltshire Street by Tim Veater
Because I can't write music, I have to settle for this verse,
My requiem in hollow words, quite unequal to the task.
The obeisance of the living to the selfless dead.
It's like an empty casket, in a shiny silent hearse,
Drawn by a four-plumed charger, gliding down a nightmare street,
Avenued by people transfixed by clack of horses feet.
So very few related - except by common blood,
Which in a far-off desert land ran premature
From youthful bodies hot and red, leaving its rusty stain.
Cut short by fate and metal - a careless indifference
To oh such vulnerable flesh, or feelings of parents for their children
Or lovers for their loves.
Here just petals strew the way, washed by the tears of pain,
Burning their own sweet furrow, down cheeks that lips have kissed.
Yet but another passing; yet by another name.
That has travelled on a journey, to where a man was slain.
A monument to timeless strife.
A battle of ideals and incompetence.
These are our boys but what of those?
For do they not feel the same?
Is their loss not just as great?
What festival can recompense? What ritual can restore?
The incendiary seeds of hate which buried,
Grow for evermore?
At Christmas when the lights flash red,
When children's faith is pure,
When beneath all joy and all thanksgiving,
The distant sound of hammering nails in wood is heard
And mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, weeping,
Here, there, and everywhere.
Strawberry (2011) by Tim Veater
Amidst the barrenness of winter
I picked a wild strawberry on Christmas day
It was pale from lack of light
A tiny fruit hiding under the leaves
But for sure it tasted strawberry.
Its pink body melted on my tongue
Its seed-dotted-exterior
Fused with its flesh in an orgasm of flavour
Out of time Out of place,
A flash-back to summer
And larger more gaudy fruit.
A fox emerged from the undergrowth
Carrying a limp rabbit.
The camelia displayed its first pink bloom
And a flock of brown birds rose up in front of me
As one from woody and leafless hedge.
My mind drifting back to when
Together we lay, my fingers tip-
Toeing over skin in joyful anticipation
Reaffirming that even in the barrenness of winter
We may still pick a strawberry on Christmas day.
Peace (2006) by Tim Veater
Peace perfect peace
Swelling the songs of silence
When passing people reprise
The sensuous fleeting pockets
Of compassion
Singing the songs of passion
Slowly through the spaces
Time and motion leave behind.
People people falling
Into the void of forgetting
The tangled wreckage of life
Begging to leave
Singing the screams of expectation
The awfulness of being
Covering the eyes of children
Not wishing to see into the future.
Impervious to the bullets whistling
Through the silken fabric
Of tormented human flesh
Fathers and their brothers
Brothers and their sons
All fall down together - One.
Meanwhile to clanking mechanical sounds
And cheerful whistling.
Dead men drive off
A job well done.
The Secret Agent by Tim Veater
Vera Zassoulich, where are you now?
In some unmarked grave?
A faded Lilly in some forgotten ditch?
Where is your youthful passion?
Where the ardent cause?
Where the screams of torture
Filtering through prison bars?
Where in St. Petersburg marks the spot
Where the Chief of Police, Fyodor Fydodorovich
Was shot? Is it marked with a blue shield?
Your lover was a Nihilist apparently.
Your female friend was flogged.
Amazingly though tried, the jury acquitted.
Maybe they were robbed
Or just that mercy and justice applied
Their rescuing arms.
What vortex of emotion!
What passion of despair!
The candled nights' of argument!
The thrill of auburn hair!
The crushing weight of tyranny!
The white hot metal - hope!
The thrill of righteous indignation
The smell of carbine smoke
Combined to make this moment
A single piercing note.
How many gun reports have echoed since
From anarchists and dreamers?
Of nationalists and revolutionaries
Terrorists and dopes?
The teeming human masses
Continue every day
To come to terms with destiny
And dull routine
Battling the insistent urge
To break away.
How fortunate we, who in freedom recline
Not needing to get up, to work or dress
But in a decadent nonchalance recline?
Whilst others in mud and dirt and oil and sweat
Live out their brutal lives
In one way or another
Striving to prove they matter, yet.
Like desperate Vera Zassoulich
Who's feet once clattered shining gas-lit clay
Of that Imperial past before it blew away
Speaks to us all of struggle
For freedom, justice and relief
Willow Flower by Tim Veater
my eye imbibed a darting bee
buzzing round the willow tree
distracted in the quickening air
unable to decide quite what or where
on jagged course it moves about
miraculous intent and doubt
meanwhile the tree with sinuous staves
waves in the breeze its fluttering leaves
dressed lightly o'er in willow flowers
for bee and me this morning dowers
surprisingly resplendent in display
the reawakening hope of each May Day
fresh wash of lemon on lime the image finds
a citric splash of colour which reminds
of magic power to soothe the pain
as much of heart as brain
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