Kirsty and I were travelling back from Holy Isle, crossing Scotland from Glasgow to Edinburgh on the train. We were talking poems. And we stopped in a siding, alive with ox-eyed daisies and willow-herb. And I remembered this beautiful poem from Edward Thomas who wrote everything he is remembered for in just three years before being killed in the battle of Arras, 1917.
The mystery and magic expansion of the last stanza is reminiscent of something that can happen when we meditate on sound. Suddenly the world opens up, further and further. And yet this moment of Edwardian England becomes deeper and deeper.
Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
🥰🥰
Meditating on sound; thanks Alastair. I have been musing this week while you all have been on retreat ( as friends are too in other parts of our world) re’ no sound. The earths abundance of constant sound is not heard in outer space, but confined to our spec of a ball ( compared to the infinity of space). It seems so much sound is in fact earth bound compared to the infinity of silence in space. Infinite silence- hard to get ones head around lol.