Stop all the clocks

A very very close friend of Twin, her husband and The Blessings has very sadly and suddenly died. I looked through my books and this blog for a passage to send. It was this poem that kept running through my mind. I think I understand it now.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever:

I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good

W.H.Auden

Frailty and Endurance

Sunday would have been Granny's birthday. I didn't manage to post this before she died but I think her final months expressed how true this quote is.

'...human can mean frailty and endurance both at the same time.' Irene Nemirovsky Suite Francaise
ballet

I count it happiness

One of the readings Granny had asked to be read at her funeral.

I count it happiness-

Ere we go so quickly where we came

To gaze ungrieving on these majesties.

The world wide sun, the stars, water and clouds

And Fire. Live Parmeno, a hundred years

Or a few months, these you will always see

And never, never any greater things.

Think of this lifetime as a festival

Or visit to a strange city, full of noise

Buying and selling, theiving, dicing stalls and joy parks.

If you leave it early friends,

Why, think you have gone to find a better Inn.

You have paid your fare and leave no enemies.

Menander b.342 BC Athens

In these hours

Darling , Dearest Granny died today.

'In these hours when the silence, unfilled by any ceremony, was made almost tangibly oppressive by a sense of absence, only the flowers took the place of the singing and psalms.
They did more than blossom and smell sweet. In unison, like a choir, ... they unstintingly poured out their fragrance and, imparting something of their scented strength in everyone, seemed to be accomplishing a ritual.
The kingdom of plants can easily be thought of as the nearest neighbour of the kingdom of death. Perhaps the mysteries of transformation and enigmas of life which so torment us are concentrated on the green of the earth, among the trees in graveyards and the flowering shoots springing from their beds.' Boris Pasternak Dr. Zhivago

31st July 1918 - 5th May 2011

Ancestors

I felt we couldn't celebrate Black History Month without a quote from Chinua Achebe.

'The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.' Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

Bathroom of the Vanities

Warmth bought me Christopher Reid's A Scattering for my birthday, it's a collection of poems he wrote after his wife died. Here's part of my favourite one, which seems appropriate as we pack up our flat. Thankfully we're packing up under very different circumstances to this poem.

Bathroom of the Vanities

The model mask, the mannequin moue,

the face I loved to catch her pulling

after sundry perfecting dabs

and micro-adjustments in front of the mirror

will never be seen, by me or the mirror, again.

......

Odd bottles in an orderly queue -

Issey Miyake, Parum, Tea Rose, the eternal billing

doves of L'Air du Temps - keep their caps

on, converse their last drops of essence and aura

and wait for no one.

Christopher Reid

@

How poignant thinking about all our lotions, potions, scents which we will leave behind.

The memories scents evoke...

7th April 2010

Dearest, If you're reading this, these are for you...
'When loved ones die, you have to live on their behalf. See things as though with their eyes. Remember how they used to say things, and use those words oneself. Be thankful that you can do things that they cannot, and also feel the sadness of it.' Louis de Bernieres Captain Correlli's Mandolin

'When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose them all at once; you lose them in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and their scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in their closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of them that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that they're gone forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.' John Irving A prayer for Owen Meany

All love to you and know that I am here x