Gone, Gone Again

Fields of baled barley at Barnyards

Looking over Braco Park towards Troup from the Dry Brigs path

Straw waiting to be baled on the Cassa, Pitullie Castle in the distance

Grey Granite has been unable, for obscure technical reasons, to post anything on either of her blogs since May. She has missed the discipline of posting entries and is reminded of lines by Edward Thomas which seem apposite to to fill the gap:

Gone, gone again

May, June, July,

And August gone,

Again gone by, 

Not memorable

Save that I saw them go,

As past the empty quays

The rivers flow.

Our walk round the Cairnhill was accompanied by the sound of combines and balers as farmers are taking advantage of the dry weather to cut the barley. Many fields are already ploughed, Buchan has a distinctly autumnal air. Perchance awaiting an Indian Summer?

Thaw - Edward Thomas

The thaw has set in and the landscape has again been transformed, this morning by half thawed snow and flooded fields. The monochromatic view from the Formartine Buchan Way to Mormond Hill over fields frozen with half frozen water still signaled Winter. However, the thawing landscape by Philorth Woods this morning brought to mind 'Thaw'  by Edward Thomas.  Perhaps, given that we are still over  a week away from the shortest day and more cold weather forecast for next week, this is optimism in the extreme.

Thaw

Over the land freckled with snow half thawed

The speculating rooks at their nests cawed

And saw from the elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass

What we could not see, Winter pass.

Edward Thomas

Serendipitously this article by David Constantine appeared in  today's  Guardian and resonated with Grey Granite who, like the author, has known and loved the poems and essays of Edward Thomas for over 40 years.

My hero: Edward Thomas

'Thomas has been a kind and implacable friend to me'





I began reading Edward Thomas in a cold winter 40 years ago. I found the blue hardback Collected Poems secondhand on Durham market, and by the fire in our strange habitation under the castle mound, nobody else at home, I read him at once, entire, knowing ever more certainly, poem by poem, that I loved him, he would be with me for life, I would learn from him.


Like other Romantics, Thomas got his poems most characteristically by walking. He was a man who walked away solitary into the wind and the rain when anxiety and the black melancholy were upon him; or who might tramp by your side, mile after mile, companionable, and never say a word; or be with you, as he was with Robert Frost, talking, listening, pausing at a gate, a gap, a stile, and so in the rhythm of a long walk and in the attentive to and fro of a conversation you would come nearer and nearer, both of you, to some important understanding.


At the heart of writing, it is always a matter of truth or lies, and anyone in that vocation wants companions, living and dead, who, when you glance their way inquiringly, will warn you by a look if you are edging away from the truth into the many ways of telling lies. Thomas has been one such kind and implacable friend to me. Having his own true tone of voice, he acts like a tuning fork in the ceaseless effort to hit and hold your own.


The dead move and change as the living do. You may think you know them through and through but then, after a lapse of time (in which you have aged), they startle you again. Just the other day, out of context, on a card, not in a book, these lines filled me with a new rush of gratitude: "A house that shall love me as I love it, / Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash trees / That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches / Shall often visit and make love in and flit . . ."




David Constantine won the BBC National Short Story award this week.

In the great silence of snow

Last night the temperature fell to -7c but this morning the sun shone and the snow covered fields were exceptionally beautiful glistening and sparkling. Extraordinary how few people venture out to enjoy them. Rufus and Grey Granite walked down towards Merryhillock and were privileged to be able to watch a pair of roe deer in the middle of a completely unblemished snow field. First we saw the buck, reddish with a creamy white scud standing stock still, he was shortly joined by a doe, they stood together for a short while before running in a wide arc across the field, sending up  a fine dust of powdery snow as they went - eventually disappearing in a patch of gorse and scrub. What a life affirming sense of being engaged with the world comes from being able to watch wild animals and birds going about their lives oblivious to one's presence.

This sighting sent Grey Granite back to browse one of her favourite poets, Edward Thomas, for the sake of:

Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,

In the great silence of snow

A child was sighing

and bitterly saying: 'Oh,

They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,

The down is fluttering from her breast!'

and still it fell through that dusky brightness

On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

and this

Out in the Dark

Out in the dark over the snow

The fallow fawns invisible go

With the fallow doe;

And the winds blow

Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round

And, when the lamp goes, without sound

At a swifter bound

Than the swiftest hound,

Arrives, and all else is drowned;

And star and I and wild and deer,

Are in the dark together, - near,

Yet far, - and fear

Drums on my ear

In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,

All the universe of sight,

Love and delight,

Before the might,

If you love it not, of night.