Favourite Poems - The Wound in Time

Pages of the Sea practice at Lyme Regis the day before Remembrance Sunday 11th November 2018. 

THE WOUND IN TIME

It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides,
Not the war to end all wars; death’s birthing place;
the earth nursing its ticking metal eggs, hatching
new carnage. But how could you know, brave
as belief as you boarded the boats, singing?
The end of God in the poisonous, shrapneled air.
Poetry gargling its own blood. We sense it was love
you gave your world for; the town squares silent,
awaiting their cenotaphs. What happened next?
War. And after that? War. And now? War. War.
History might as well be water, chastising this shore;
for we learn nothing from your endless sacrifice.
Your faces drowning in the pages of the sea.

chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it.

Carol Ann Duffy, 2018

Favourite Paintings - Remedios Varo 1908 - 1963

Microcosm 1939

Mimesis 1960

Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst 1961

The Call 1961

I have always loved Remedios Varo's work since discovering her surreal world in the 1980s. She studied at the same school as Dali, and was influenced by Bosch and Goya but her paintings have a strongly feminine character.  Her later work, particularly in the 1960s, is the most assured and interesting but the subject matter, style and colouring scarcely change over the last thirty years of her life.


For more paintings, click here

Her work reminds me of these beautiful words by Edith Wharton.

See also the remarkable Hilma af klint

Favourite Gardens - The Last of The Buildings - October 2018

The Buildings, Broughton, is a superb garden designed and maintained by Gillian Pugh and is the subject of several posts here as well as being the inspiration for the grass garden at Old Swan House.
They are moving house shortly and so this great garden will soon be gone or at least irreparably altered. Fortunately, her son-in-law, Ed Crispin, has made a book of photos of the garden taken in all seasons that beautifully illustrate the ethereal effects and astonishing beauty that she has created.

See also The Buildings in Autumn 
The Buildings, Sept 2014
Favourite Gardens - The Buildings, Broughton