Thursday, 22 April 2021

A Spring Day Off

 






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. 

Wednesday, 14 April 2021

Jeremiah 24

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.