Things being various

Last night, sitting on the verandah in the dark,  words of a poem came to me. Only a few of them. I couldn't remember the poet or the poem but I had inklings, and a search of the web which included the words Irish poet and snow and a few of the phrases I remembered came up with it. So now I will put it here so I won't lose it again.


Snow, by Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible
World  is suddener than we fancy it

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkeness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands---
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.


What made me think of this poem? It was because of the enormousness  and beauty of the night, the red star I could see, the hint of mist coming down, the silence, and the feeling I had that the world was strange and wonderful. 'World is suddener than we fancy it'.

Other nights:

When I was about three, sitting upstairs in our house in the dark looking out at the night. Everyone else downstairs. And then all  hell breaks loose, and my older brother, who is meant to be minding me ( my parents have a shop, one of those old fashioned general stores that don't seem to exist any longer) has run up the stairs in the dark, slipped and broken a tooth. What were you doing by yourself up there in the dark, they asked me, and I said, nursing my darling baby. I have always liked cats, and sitting with one in the silence and the dark was preferable to the quotidian family life downstairs.

And then, much (much!) older, lying on a verandah on the floor right at the very edge because there is only a top railing, no balustrades, on a sweatingly hot North Coast night, with the darkness and a creek running far below, a potter in the worship behind me working and listening to Wilko, Spiders, ten minutes of krautrock, a dark drum on an endless beat and the bright sound of thrashing guitars.

World is crazier and more of it than we think.

And that is why my favourite writers are the modernists, who tried to put into words what it was like to be alive, the random mixture of thoughts and emotions and sense impressions, the whole strangeness and beauty of life, which comes to us all sometimes.

The drunkeness of things being various.