"When March Blows"

Ivor Gurney was extremely sensitive to changes in the world around him, be it the weather or the seasons.  Of course, one could argue that any "nature poet" (e.g., Edward Thomas, Andrew Young, John Clare, William Wordsworth) necessarily possesses such a sensitivity.  But in Gurney this sensitivity was particularly acute.

As I have noted before, I am reluctant to attribute Gurney's qualities as a poet to his sometimes precarious mental condition.  It would be unfair to him to suggest that his sensitivity was a product of that condition.  At the risk of sounding romantic, I think that Gurney can be likened to Vincent van Gogh:  the sensuous presence of the world -- everything in it -- was so deeply felt by both of them that they were constantly at risk of being overwhelmed (both physically and mentally).  It would be a disservice to them to describe their sensitivity as a pathology.  Perhaps we are the ones who need to catch up with them.

Enslin Du Plessis, "Cotswold Landscape" (1942)

                        When March Blows

When March blows, and Monday's linen is shown
On the goose berry bushes, and the worried washer alone
Fights at the soaked stuff, meres and the rutted pools
Mirror the wool-pack clouds, and shine clearer than jewels

And the children throw stones in them, spoil mirrors and clouds
The worry of washing over; the worry of foods,
Brings tea-time; March quietens as the trouble dies.
The washing is brought in under wind-swept clear skies.

Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (J. M. Dent 1996).

John Singer Sargent, "La Biancheria" (1910)

The subject of the washing drying in the wind brings to mind a lovely poem by Andrew Young.  The poem has appeared here before, but it is worth revisiting.

           The Shepherd's Hut

The smear of blue peat smoke
That staggered on the wind and broke,
The only sign of life,
Where was the shepherd's wife,
Who left those flapping clothes to dry,
Taking no thought for her family?
For, as they bellied out
And limbs took shape and waved about,
I thought, She little knows
That ghosts are trying on her children's clothes.

Andrew Young, Collected Poems (Rupert Hart-Davis 1960).

James McIntosh Patrick, "A City Garden" (1940)

Louis MacNeice On Heraclitus

The phrase "everything flows" is often attributed to Heraclitus.  However, it is open to question whether Heraclitus actually said those words.  More likely, the phrase was attributed to him by a later ancient commentator.  Be that as it may, "flowing" is the theme of the following poem by Louis MacNeice.  (An aside:  Derek Mahon, who we heard from in my previous post, has written a fine elegy to MacNeice titled "In Carrowdore Churchyard.")

                 Variation on Heraclitus

Even the walls are flowing, even the ceiling,
Nor only in terms of physics; the pictures
Bob on each picture rail like floats on a line
While the books on the shelves keep reeling
Their titles out into space and the carpet
Keeps flying away to Arabia nor can this be where I stood --
Where I shot the rapids I mean -- when I signed
On a line that rippled away with a pen that melted
Nor can this now be the chair -- the chairoplane of a chair --
That I sat in the day that I thought I had made up my mind
And as for that standard lamp it too keeps waltzing away
Down an unbridgeable Ganges where nothing is standard
And lights are but lit to be drowned in honour and spite of some dark
And vanishing goddess.  No, whatever you say,
Reappearance presumes disappearance, it may not be nice
Or proper or easily analysed not to be static
But none of your slide snide rules can catch what is sliding so fast
And, all you advisers on this by the time it is that,
I just do not want your advice
Nor need you be troubled to pin me down in my room
Since the room and I will escape for I tell you flat:
One cannot live in the same room twice.

Louis MacNeice, Solstices (1961).

               John Singer Sargent, "A Mountain Stream, Tyrol" (1914)

Derek Mahon On Heraclitus

I confess that I cannot make head or tail out of Heraclitus.  The best that I can come up with is that his pronouncements -- "you cannot step into the same river twice," "the way up is the way down," etc. (these are paraphrases of the numerous translations out there) -- remind me of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.  However, whatever the fragments mean, they certainly sound good.

Two of my favorite poets have written poems inspired by those fragments, and the poems provide me with a better clue as to what Heraclitus is up to than my own bumbling attempts to figure him out.  First, Derek Mahon:

               Heraclitus on Rivers

Nobody steps into the same river twice.
The same river is never the same
Because that is the nature of water.
Similarly your changing metabolism
Means that you are no longer you.
The cells die, and the precise
Configuration of the heavenly bodies
When she told you she loved you
Will not come again in this lifetime.

You will tell me that you have executed
A monument more lasting than bronze;
But even bronze is perishable.
Your best poem, you know the one I mean,
The very language in which the poem
Was written, and the idea of language,
All these things will pass away in time.

Derek Mahon, Collected Poems (The Gallery Press 1999).

In my next post, we will see what Louis MacNeice has to say about the ever-flowing world of Heraclitus.

              John Singer Sargent, "Stream in the Val d'Aosta" (c. 1909)