RERUM # 4
Tomorrow morning I shoulder my bag & walk the 1,000 yards into school to begin my 114th & final term of teaching. I shall make this short journey with neither a song in my heart nor a tear in my eye. I have no clear notion of what life will present the other side of full & paid employment. All I do know for certain is that the wearing of slippers, the cultivating of a small garden & the walking of dogs will play no part.
So I shall accommodate the day-to-day tristesses of the winding up of courses, the post-examination departure of kids I have taught & come to know well & care for greatly, the sudden influx of memories from within those 114 terms (& from my own childhood times of awakening & growth). And when it comes to clambering up onto the makeshift stage to say my farewells to the multitude of 16+ students - those leaving & those staying on - & my colleagues at the Leavers’ Ball in June, the resonance & moment of it all will weigh heavy. I shall be acutely conscious as I speak of the rapt & focussed attention of the sober & the cheerful & indiscriminate support of the slightly tipsy. And however clamorous the reception & sincere the applause, I shall also be fully (& wryly) aware that within a month or two the waters will close over my head & whatever is to constitute the future quotidian round at St Chris will proceed unimpeded by my absence.
#
Through the estate agents we have offered the sellers of the house we still want very much to buy a deposit against their putting it back on the market. If they’re unwilling to accept this deal, we’ll offer to pay rental up to the time Emma’s house sells & we’re in a position to purchase outright. We made the offer yesterday morning & were told that the owners were considering the matter & would let us know imminently. They haven’t yet so this has been something of a tough weekend.
#
We heard the other day that one of the husbands in the small group that comprised the ante-natal class of which we were a part prior to Reuben’s birth has bowel cancer. The couples in the group have remained in touch & so we have all tracked the progress of each other's first offspring, & now those of the second generation. F. is in his early 30s & now has two children of roughly Reuben’s & Rosie’s ages. Our struggles with house sale & purchase amount to nothing beside what lies before that couple.
#
The stern & uncompromising modernism of Auden, Spender & MacNeice in the ‘30s & ‘40s casts a shadow over the perceived fusty pre-Great War imperialism of the likes of Rudyard Kipling. Forever typed as a bastion of the Victorian/Edwardian establishment, Kipling has never quite regained the poetic esteem in which once he was held. Sure, he lent respectability to the colonial adventures of the late 19th century with his Barrack Room Ballads. But anyone who has read the poetry that immediately followed the death of his son in battle during the First World War can be in little doubt as to the deeply personal nature of his perspectives. The lines, If any question why we died/Tell them, because our fathers lied contain a controlled anger worthy of Siegfried Sassoon. And his brief poem A Son displays little interest in or support for the ancient regime that spawned & administered that most terrible of wars.
A SON
My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would
I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests
are few.
On a decidedly lighter & more romantic note, here is his poem The Gipsy Trail.
THE GIPSY TRAIL
The white moth to the closing bine,
The bee to the opened clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
Ever the wide world over.
Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.
Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
Out of the grime and the gray
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
Gipsy, come away!
The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,
The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad
By the tie of a roving breed.
The pied snake to the rifted rock,
The buck to the stony plain,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
And both to the road again.
Both to the road again, again!
Out on a clean sea-track—
Follow the cross of the gipsy trail
Over the world and back!
Follow the Romany patteran
North where the blue bergs sail,
And the bows are gray with the frozen spray,
And the masts are shod with mail.
Follow the Romany patteran
Sheer to the Austral Light,
Where the besom of God is the wild South wind,
Sweeping the sea-floors white.
Follow the Romany patteran
West to the sinking sun,
Till the junk-sails lift through the houseless drift,
And the east and the west are one.
Follow the Romany patteran
East where the silence broods
By a purple wave on an opal beach
In the hush of the Mahim woods.
“The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
The deer to the wholesome wold
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
As it was in the days of old.”
The heart of a man to the heart of a maid—
Light of my tents, be fleet.
Morning waits at the end of the world,
And the world is all at our feet!
11:19:07 PM 
|
