Not Dark Yet

Time will say nothing

Shadows are falling and I been here all day

It's too hot to sleep and time is running away

Feel like my soul has turned into steel

I've still got the scars that the sun didn't let me heal

There's not even room enough to be anywhere

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Well, I found myself in the middle of a dark wood, mulling over the obscure paths we follow in life, and it occurred to me that my sense of humanity was going down the drain....

Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain

I saw this haunted, frightened tree, its trunk smashed by the wind, and, the thought occurred to me that,

I just don't see why I should even care

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

So, being a little footloose, and free of fantasy, I closed the heavenly door of my private and personal  dwelling, through whose leaded panes the sun was winking goodbye,

Wished the fish in my moat farewell, envying for a moment their gelid blood, their fourth degree turpitude,

And, choosing not on this occasion (that  ontological option - free choice! or is that epistemological?) to extricate my old bicycle from the clutches of the spreading bracken,

I light out for the territory, fearful that some Aunt Sally might try to sivilize (sic) me....

You know, I really can't stand it?  I been there before.....

Well I been to London and I been to gay Paree

I followed the river and I got to the sea

I've been down to the bottom of a whirlpool of lies

I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes

As the dusky gatherings confuse me, and  the wheels fall off and burn, (the seat covers fade and the water moccasins die),

Well, there's too many people

And they're all too hard to please

I take refuge by the fireside of a quiet inn, picking at the warp and weft that hold together our current chaos.....

I feel the spinning of the world, the careering past light and dark so blinding as to take away my inspiration, my very breath....  Outside the bric-a-brac of accumulations sits fixed upon the shelf,

The tin of 'Brasso' out of reach behind the closed glass of time.

Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Down the street the dogs are barkin'

And the day is a-gettin' dark

As the night comes in a-fallin'

The dogs'll lose their bark

The tower of St Mildred's looms above me, bells chiming in practiced peals,

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail

For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

It is night and the light is dead.  I touch the boards above my face, the claustrophobic walls of seeming gentle life, wishing for a dawn against my will.....

I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from

Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer

It's not dark yet 

but it's gettin' there.

Not Dark Yet 

Bob Dylan

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If I Could Tell You

W H Auden (1940)

*     *     *     *

Footnote:

Not Dark Yet was recorded in January 1997 and released in September that year on the album Time Out of Mind.

In the Chapter entitled Paul Smith, at the top of page 213 of my 2011 Picador edition of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho, I read the following sentences:

Nancy asks, "How's the shad roe at Rafaeli's?" Right now, outside this store, it's not dark yet but it is getting there.

Birches

And life is too much like a pathless wood....

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

A little over one hundred years ago Robert Frost wrote these lines.  He was struck by the pliable beauty of birch trees, especially as he observed their tender twigs weighted down with ice on a freezing morning after rain.

Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored 

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

He sees the trees bowed down, 

trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

Perhaps thinking of John Keats? He could see Autumn.....

sitting careless on a granary floor, 

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind....

Aah!  The wonderful power of imagination.....

Frost remembers swinging from such trees as a boy himself, and describes how a lonely farmer's son might have swung on all these trees.  He describes the technique, touching the excitement:

He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

And Frost meditates on whether he might climb one again.....

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

For, as he says,

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open. 

I'd like to get away from earth awhile 

And then come back to it and begin over.

Yes. It would be good to get away from earth.....

But, to come back, and begin again;

I'm not so sure.....

There are attractions, of course, but if you could leave, and then come back, who would want to pick up where they left off?  

Or start again at square one?  

Look at the damage we have done.  

Are doing.  

If we had the choice to start again without stepping off the path and on that butterfly, OK.  But to be a new born thing today is not to be envied.

To be fair, Frost did say:

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

And in this he is right - we don't have any options.  Earth is the right place for love.....

But not everyone is blessed with love.  Look at the tears on this tree....

Frost aspires,

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, 

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk 

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But he doesn't really want to go.  He wants his cake,

And he wants to eat it.....

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

OK.  Indeed.  Frost's poetry is about things that matter.  As he says, [a poem] begins in delight and ends in wisdom.....No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.  No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

I walk across the snow on Nomansland Common, the winter sun low in the morning, dark clouds mustering above the cold land.  Silver birches stand in clumps, their white stems gleaming, their dark twigs glistening with ice.  We brought our children here when we had just moved in, fifteen years ago or so.  

These beautiful trees shiver in the chill, but hold dear memories.  We don't play as we once did, but....

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Time passes.  We forget.  And are forgotten.  I don't even know if I knew that Robert Frost read at the inauguration of President John F Kennedy.  I certainly didn't know the poem he read.  How differently these words  resound today.....

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

The Gift Outright

And, above

Birches

by

ROBERT [Lee] FROST

1874 - 1963

https://youtu.be/aBw-OaOWddY

All over the world....

Dans le monde entier.....

Dans le monde entier

All over the world 

People must meet and part 

There's someone like me 

Feeling a pain in their heart

Maybe it's the time of year?  The excessive joys (?) of Christmas are behind us; the New Year already looks jaded; winter is about to crash drunkenly through the doors.....

Shorry I'm late.....

I listen to Patsy Cline singing 'Crazy' but for some reason think of Françoise Hardy....

Who knows where that connection comes from?

Van Morrison, through a glass, darkly, doesn't clear the mists.  Doesn't cut the mustard....?

Van ordinaire?

The Roman God Janus has a lot to answer for.  All this looking back, looking forward stuff.  January is his month, and this was when I was born.  Cold, and damp.  

And this month our little one has flown away  south to rift with her past, and her present,

to make a new start,

To jump start the abandoned Rolls,

Somehow,

Somewhere.....

Some may meet again 

Under that same bright star 

If maybe some night 

You come back from afar 

Who cares if tonight 

I don't know where you are?

Now that picture, from Afon Mawddach, makes me think of The Wind among the Reeds, W B Yeats....

When shall the stars be blown about the sky, 

Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, 

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words.  

Is it?  What worth has a picture on its own?  If we have no words to go with it, where is the meaning?

It's the connections.  Those tiny flashing sparks that make a glow-worm put EDF Hinkley Point to shame.....

Or is that like asking for the sound of one hand clapping?  If we can see, we can all see differently.  

Red, green and blue may be the core colours of life and love, but who is to say you see what I see?

Are these poppies for remembrance?

Or do we forget?

And if we can read, we can all read differently.  

As Patsy Cline sings the words of Willie Nelson (stretched out on the deck of The  [ironically named] Victory, gasping Kiss me, Françoise....)

Worry, why do I let myself worry?

Wondering what in the world did I do?

Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you

I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying

And I'm crazy for loving you

Aaahh!  How many lovely people are there?  From Margate to Mama.... 

And what becomes of them all?

All over the world 

Others are sad tonight 

There's someone like me 

Watching the sun's fading light

Whether it's drawing out of Birmingham on a crowded train in winter......

Or driving over the Pennines in stormy summer.....

Or wandering by the Thames in early Autumn......

I wish you well, my little one.....

All over the sky 

There is the same warm glow 

Here under that star 

I'm wanting you to know 

Wherever you are 

That I still love you so

Françoise Marie Aubine Hardy /Julian More

I will be there for you,

In the Jerusalem....

Best is yet to come and babe won't that be fine

You think you've seen the sun

But you ain't seen it shine

Frank Sinatra

For SRBG