It is now four months since Deborah died, so I thought I ought to go out and discover somewhere new on my own. We’d walked part of the old railway line near Thornton, including the viaduct there, but had not explored the nearest section crossing Hewenden Viaduct. Photographically, some nice enough moments, emotionally, not so much.
Jeremiah 24
Two baskets of figs, two bowls of
hosaf.
Good figs in one, tender, desirable,
bad in the other, mouldy, inedible.
The juicy, they say, grew in
displacement,
the putrid decomposed in places of
safety.
Can that be?
Exile and suffering develop flavour?
Adaptation and shelter spoil it?
An ancient seer saw them first,
his nation overrun, its sacred sites
levelled.
Those deported, he sang, will
struggle into ripeness,
those who escape or lie low, will
settle into rot.
Texts came back in one of the
baskets,
refined in distant distinctiveness
and still sweet on our tongue.
If anything came in the other,
it spoilt and was lost.
No song can make promises,
yet whisper tunes of exposed,
vulnerable enrichment,
sound dirges about accommodation,
about collusive decay.
