The Solace of Poetry
It is very warm here today. It was warm yesterday too. After I’d sent off an article I went for a walk later on in the day. The sea looked deep blue and sparkly. I bought strawberries at a shop stall.
My duvet is out in the sunshine getting an airing. When I was an au pair in Switzerland many years ago we hung our duvets out the window every day to sweeten in the sun. Last Saturday at a frolicsome little Italian shop/cafe in Bray one of the patrons…a chef from another Italian restaurant…let me sample one of the deeply delicious biscuits he was clearly savouring. When they are back in stock I want to buy them. They are a ‘find’. And so was the pink jumper, and soft cardigan I found in a charity shop yesterday. Two for the price of one! A bargain.
I loved a documentary on BBC television last night. In it Sheila Hancock shared some of poems she loves. I particularly loved
‘Try To Praise The Mutilated World’ by Adam Zagajewski
It includes the lines
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
(From Without End, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lots of love,
Grace
