leaves wrestle

 

Erman's Birch (Betula ermanii) maybe. Midsomer Norton, 23 April 2022.

the right to work                   
the rest not
just supposin’
baas
gibbets ahead
sweet rocket
rue
rubbed lemon balm
a snake
thoughtless as a bird
thud rolled hibiscus bloom
onto a plastic cover
water violets duck
earth
into water
into fire
into air
no longer
able to focus
the match flame
adoring its blue
‘shadow
my sweet nurse
keep me from burning’
george peele
had bethsabe say
educated in empire
internal colonialism
occupation
by a foreign power
whose
lives
does the government affect?
colossal heartburn
don’t confuse
not feeling able to go
with wanting to stay

machines
now live in space
we place them so
our shell is thicker
“what is that?”
“that is a dancing girl”
“is it killed
with, or by, now?”

[from Tom Raworth's "West Wind", written 1982-1983.]

Prunus 'Ukon'. Frome, 1 April 2022.

Yes, I know, "West Wind" is a somewhat obvious Tom Raworth poem to focus on. But suitable for Raworth novices, which is exactly what I am. 

For one thing, "West Wind" is unusually accessible. It appeared as the final poem of Tottering State: New and Selected Poems, 1963-1983 (1984). It's in the Collected Poems (2003) of course. It's also the most substantial piece in Miles Champion's selection As When (2015), which otherwise consists mostly of short poems. (That's where I read it.) It's also available online: 

https://my-blackout.com/2020/04/14/tom-raworth-west-wind/  

"West Wind" is accessible in another way, too. There are parts of the poem that comment angrily on political events of the time. (Margaret Thatcher appears as "a handbag".) Another section relates to visiting his mother in hospital before her death in 1983, and her memory loss. These are just the kind of topics we expect modern poems to be about. But not poems by Tom Raworth. 

The glimpses of emotion and autobiography light up pathways through the dense text; it's astonishing to discover how much life subsists within these telegraphic lines of one or two words, predominantly nouns. 

Perhaps as a result, "West Wind" has received more commentary than most other Raworth poems (see end of post for examples).

Prunus 'Ukon'. Bath, 8 April 2022.

The extract came from section XI, the last and longest. (They are not actually numbered.)

Here it is once more, with notes:

the right to work

[Slogan used by protesters against high unemployment.

the rest not                                 
just supposin’   

                 

[1980 Status Quo album, with a cruise missile on the sleeve.

baas                                   

                

[Sheep. Also "boss" as used by black Africans to white colonials (King Solomon's Mines; Time of the Butcherbird).

gibbets ahead
sweet rocket

[Another name for Dame's Violet (Hesperis matronalis).

rue                  

[A herb; sorrow, regret, repentance and (a major theme of "West Wind") remembrance.

rubbed lemon balm
a snake
thoughtless as a bird
thud rolled hibiscus bloom  

onto a plastic cover

[Hibiscus flower has a snake-like appearance. Motif on beachwear fabrics etc.

water violets duck   

               

[Water Violet: Hottonia palustris.

earth                  

into water

into fire
into air

[The four elements...

no longer
able to focus
the match flame 

adoring its blue 

[Cf. "a city's blue glow spikes / from shadows fanned" (Section I), "matchsticks" (Section VI).                   

‘shadow                

my sweet nurse

keep me from burning’
george peele
had bethsabe say

[Sc. 1 of David and Bethsabe (c. 1594). Bethsabe's bathing song and subsequent speech connect three elements: fire, air and water. (The air is Zephyr, the West Wind.) But as Raworth notes, the real matter of her enjoyment and David's lust is the unspoken element, earth.

educated in empire
internal colonialism
occupation
by a foreign power

[The Falklands, April 1982. But internally we too are occupied by a foreign power (Westminster). 

whose
lives
does the government affect?
colossal heartburn
don’t confuse
not feeling able to go
with wanting to stay 

machines             

now live in space

[Satellites, since 1957. The vast majority are American. Ronald  Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative in March 1983.

we place them so

our shell is thicker

[Cf. "armour", "carapaces", elsewhere in the poem.

“what is that?”
“that is a dancing girl”
“is it killed               

with, or by, now?”

[Moral agency of machines.

Pear blossom (Pyrus communis). Frome, 12 April 2022.

Other notes:

from Section VI:

the      w     particle      

[Predicted in the 1960s, detected in 1983. Important in radioactive decay. 

shadowed by sunset

slid right

leaving an ocean           

flattened by the moon  

[The moon's gravity stretches the ocean (towards the sublunar point) and thus flattens it. In this scene the poet looks southward over the sea (English Channel? Brighton?). Sunset is on the right and a rising full moon on the left. The poet is looking ahead but thinking behind: into his own head: "nothing in their heads / but a sense of distance / between their ears" and behind him "i feel / behind me / examining my hair / friend / lifeless rock". (The question of what's alive and what isn't alive keeps coming up in the poem, e.g. in connection with technology -- computers, missiles.)

Reproduction of the graphic at the end of Section VI of "West Wind"

This was fun. I was trying to work out how Raworth's graphic was made. As you can see from the colours, most of the pattern can be drawn with just three lines. There are then seven accretions, mostly on the right (from TULIP downwards), and an isolated one at the bottom (STOAT). 

Some of the words are split up: O / SIP  (e.g. Mandelstam) ; MA / JORCA . 

ARGUS : Operation Argus was a 1958 US nuclear test to see if high altitude nuclear detonations produced "phenomena of potentially significant military importance by interfering with communications and weapons performance".

The graphic relates in a very general way to the introspective end of Section VI; the poet's uneasy thinking, fear of the pointlessness of language, and desire to believe in its solidity and solace:

the noise 

of mind

leaves wrestle

stalks green

matchsticks

descriptive words

verbs

directions

spherical geometry

the comfort of nouns

Honesty (Lunaria annua). Frome, 12 April 2022.

from Section VII:

timex

down to france

computer city

[One of the earliest home computers, the Timex/Sinclair 1000 (US version of the Sinclair ZX-81) went on sale in 1981. It cost $99.

richard seebright (?)    

fruit painter

[Richard Sebright (1868-1951) at Royal Worcester.

Common Mouse-ear (Cerastium fontanum). Bratton hill fort, 15 April 2022.

from Section VIII:

cement works

by the medway

[There are several between Snodland and Rochester. The poet is on his way to visit his mother in hospital. By train, most likely, as in Section X.

faint dots

apple green

through stiff orchards

thirties white concrete

glass shattered

in rusted frames

my mother sits 

[From the description this sounds like the original building of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, opened in 1937 and then noted for its gleaming white walls. 

The hospital campus was much expanded in the 1960s, which might explain "the doctor / is at the other hospital" (Section IX). 

English Elm (Ulmus procera). Frome, 16 April 2022.

from Section IX:

god made me

no

my parents made me

a protection

and an ornament

new money

says in Latin

a motto

my father notes

evelyn

recommended to charles

[John Evelyn's motto for the Royal Society: Nullius in verba. Based on Horace and meaning "Swearing allegiance to no master", i.e. Don't take somebody else's word for it (Aristotle's, say). 

Unfortunately the same principle of sturdy independence from authority doesn't extend to deciding what to research, or who purchases the results. In practice, science is an instrument for the exploitation of others. That, of course, is my opinion, not Tom Raworth's. As one of the earliest survivors of open heart surgery, he might reflect that his adult life was made by science, as well as by his parents.

Sophie Watson on nullius in verba : https://www.plebity.org/conversations/nullius-in-verba-take-no-ones-word

followed

by an alliance party broadcast

[The grieving poet thinks it's "lucky" his mother is missing the party political broadcast by the SDP-Liberal Alliance (in the lead-up to the general election of June 1983). 

Greater Pond-sedge (Carex riparia). Biss Meadows (Trowbridge), 20 April 2022.

from Section X:

what distance

between the double orange lines

in a roman wall? 

[As on the Roman wall at Silchester, where double lines of tile alternate with flint and stone. Maybe there's something like that in the Roman parts of Canterbury's city walls? 

Ribwort Plantain (Plantago lanceolata). Frome, 21 April 2022.

from Section XI:

five days ago

i saw a ring

around the evening sun

radius tip of thumb

to little finger

of my stretched right arm

brown to purple

edged by a rainbow

lacking red and orange

clouds almost clear

streamed from the horizon

bent at the colour

as smoke in a wind tunnel

[That's more than enough information to identify the ring as a 22 degree halo, the most common solar halo. 

A nice sighting to be told about, not exactly commonplace. But surely what stands out, in the context of a Raworth poem, is a lucidity that verges on chattiness; lines that distinctly lack compression or consequence or rapidity.

What's going on here? I think the underlying topic must be the poet's own unusual approach in this particular poem. He's, as it were, commenting ironically on it and wondering just how much of this kind of thing he wants to do. Not much at all, as it proved.

Apetalous form of Bulbous Buttercup (Ranunculus bulbosus). Frome, 21 April 2022.

Some pieces about Tom Raworth that I've enjoyed reading: 

Iain Sinclair, "The poet steamed". An LRB review of the Collected Poems and Removed for Further Study (essays about Raworth edited by Nate Dorward). 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n16/iain-sinclair/the-poet-steamed

Brian M. Reed, 'Carry on, England: Tom Raworth's "West Wind," Intuition, and Neo-Avant-Garde Poetics", Contemporary Literature Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 170-206.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4489156

Mandy Bloomfield, '"A fluctuating relationship with nature": Tom Raworth’s ecopoetics,' Critical Quarterly Vol 59 No 2 (2017), pp. 65-82:

https://www.academia.edu/40073084/_A_fluctuating_relationship_with_nature_Tom_Raworth_s_ecopoetics

I've also read "What Was To One Side or Not Real:The Poetry of Tom Raworth 1970–1991", a chapter in Robert Sheppard's The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and its Discontents 1950-2000 (2005). The full text is available online, but I doubt if the download is legal, so I'm not giving the link.

White form of Honesty (Lunaria annua). Yate, 22 April 2022.

Five more Preludes

 

Prelude No 6 in A:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 6 In A

Prelude No 7 in Eb minor:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 7 In Eb Minor

Prelude No 8 in G# minor:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 8 In G# Minor

Prelude No 9 in E:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 9 In E

Prelude No 10 in G minor:

michaelpeverett · Prelude No 10 In G Minor

Five more preludes, numbers 6 - 10.  There will be 24, eventually.

Here are the first five:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-first-few-preludes.html

La Compagnie des Indes

Symposium at Port Louis

Drifting ashore on a salt-cracked book-box,

Buoyed up with Byron and Shakespeare,

Once again we ship Coles' Notes

To Newcastle. No home these days

For obsolete litterateurs,

Only temporary anchorage

Deep in the southern hemisphere.

Safe for now in the cyclone's eye,

With scribbled notes on a borrowed page

And winging it like Hannay, 

It seems our task is to discover whether

Concordia et Progressio can

Ever be more than contraries

Yoked by violence together.   ...

The beginning of a poem from Sean O'Brien's The Drowned Book (2007), a poem both formidable and annoying, and these two responses can't be separated, they are both part of the poem's meaning. 

It's a highly literary fabric. Those opening lines brush against John Masefield's "Cargoes", like neighbouring boats in a harbour.  (It's a poem that's mentioned later; its celebration of the glory days of empire and colonialism was already a little clouded in 1903).  

Port Louis is the capital city of Mauritius. It was named in 1736, in honour of Louis XV. This was when Mauritius was named l'Isle de France ("l'Île" in modern spelling). When the island became British in 1814, the orginal Dutch name was restored. 

The motto of the city is Concordia et Progressio (Harmony and Progress). The motto reminds the visiting litterateur of discordia concors in Johnson's divagation on the wit of the metaphysical poets, and hence of "The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions..." . But after all it helps him to frame the poem's question; about the symposium, and about Port Louis too. 

(I have no idea why or which Hannay appears here.)

If the poem laughs at the author's own ridiculous position in showing up at a Mauritius symposium, it casts the same disrespectful eye at the Mauritian end too. There's a "centenarian entrepreneur" who still sees EngLit in terms of Chesterton and Masefield. Shakuntala Hawoldar (b. 1944) is "Mrs Hawoldar": not so much a fellow poet as an exotic ceremonial presence (she was President of the Mauritian Writers Association):

Till Mrs Hawoldar decides

To fire the sunset gun and bring

Proceedings to a close.

And immediately afterwards, there are those funny French names picked out of the list of Mayors of Port Louis:

The names of former mayors

Are allegorical in spades:

Monsieur Charon, Messrs Forget,

Tranquille and Martial.  ...

It's a drop-in visitor's private amusement at sights he's rapidly passing by, people he'll never meet again.  But that inevitable cultural mismatch is part of what the poem is about.

And as the allegorical names hint, the cultural isolation keeps pulling him towards thoughts of death; a melancholy but somehow entrancing kind of death, in whose light the complications of history and multiculturalism can be set aside as irrelevant. The poem at the end is no longer laughing or snidy or uncomfortable, but beautiful:

Let poison run back up the leaf,

The will resume its inoocence, and all

Before they go join hands downstage

To take the sea's applause and look

Once more at how the waves come in

As ever, faithful to the shore

And yet asleep

As soundly as the drowned men in the deeps

Beyond the coral shelf,

To whom the upper world

Is sealed, as firmly

As the mind of God himself. 

*

I'm reading "Symposium at Port Louis" as (in part) a poem about the hopeless inadequacy of poetry. 

As it happens that theme is also sounded in my sample poem by Shakuntala Hawoldar:

Birth of Bangladesh

I can only stand

And watch the profiles of grief pass by,

Having known just greasepaint and glycerine tears,

I cannot pretend to the agony twisting in her groins against her will,

Having known only the sweets of self-surrender;

I cannot play the child who scrapes the bin for grains

from leftovers of leftovers,

I cannot be the mother collecting remnants

Of what had once churned in her womb --

Or simulate the naked face of want

Staring from rich pools of misery;

My posturing and my words

Are mere celluloid projections

Of the raw corpses littered beneath the Bangla Sun,

And my silence a betrayal of my kind. 

[Source: "Three Poets: Thwaite, Hawoldar, Pernia", India International Centre Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 3 (July 1979), pp. 237-251. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23001613 . The poem is about the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. Lines 4-5 refer to the genocidal rapes carried out by soldiers.]

*

That restorative vision at the end of "Symposium at Port Louis" arose from the island setting recalling The Tempest. (A few lines earlier we had A Midsummer Night's Dream, too.)

One literary work that doesn't get alluded to in "Symposium at Port Louis", so far as I know, is Paul et Virginie, the 1788 bestseller by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737 - 1814). The story takes place in a paradisal Mauritian valley, close to Port Louis.

Paul at length descended from the tree, overcome with fatigue and vexation. He looked around in order to make some arrangement for passing the night in that desert; but he could find neither fountain, nor palm-tree, nor even a branch of dry wood fit for kindling a fire. He was then impressed, by experience, with the sense of his own weakness, and began to weep. Virginia said to him,—"Do not weep, my dear brother, or I shall be overwhelmed with grief. I am the cause of all your sorrow, and of all that our mothers are suffering at this moment. I find we ought to do nothing, not even good, without consulting our parents. Oh, I have been very imprudent!"—and she began to shed tears. "Let us pray to God, my dear brother," she again said, "and he will hear us." They had scarcely finished their prayer, when they heard the barking of a dog. "It must be the dog of some hunter," said Paul, "who comes here at night, to lie in wait for the deer." Soon after, the dog began barking again with increased violence. "Surely," said Virginia, "it is Fidele, our own dog: yes,—now I know his bark. Are we then so near home?—at the foot of our own mountain?" A moment after, Fidele was at their feet, barking, howling, moaning, and devouring them with his caresses. Before they could recover from their surprise, they saw Domingo running towards them. At the sight of the good old negro, who wept for joy, they began to weep too, but had not the power to utter a syllable. When Domingo had recovered himself a little,—"Oh, my dear children," said he, "how miserable have you made your mothers! How astonished they were when they returned with me from mass, on not finding you at home. Mary, who was at work at a little distance, could not tell us where you were gone. I ran backwards and forwards in the plantation, not knowing where to look for you. At last I took some of your old clothes, and showing them to Fidele, the poor animal, as if he understood me, immediately began to scent your path; and conducted me, wagging his tail all the while, to the Black River. I there saw a planter, who told me you had brought back a Maroon negro woman, his slave, and that he had pardoned her at your request. But what a pardon! he showed her to me with her feet chained to a block of wood, and an iron collar with three hooks fastened round her neck! After that, Fidele, still on the scent, led me up the steep bank of the Black River, where he again stopped, and barked with all his might. This was on the brink of a spring, near which was a fallen palm-tree, and a fire, still smoking. At last he led me to this very spot. We are now at the foot of the mountain of the Three Breasts, and still a good four leagues from home. Come, eat, and recover your strength." Domingo then presented them with a cake, some fruit, and a large gourd, full of beverage composed of wine, water, lemon-juice, sugar, and nutmeg, which their mothers had prepared to invigorate and refresh them. Virginia sighed at the recollection of the poor slave, and at the uneasiness they had given their mothers. She repeated several times—"Oh, how difficult it is to do good!" While she and Paul were taking refreshment, it being already night, Domingo kindled a fire: and having found among the rocks a particular kind of twisted wood, called bois de ronde, which burns when quite green, and throws out a great blaze, he made a torch of it, which he lighted. But when they prepared to continue their journey, a new difficulty occurred; Paul and Virginia could no longer walk, their feet being violently swollen and inflamed. Domingo knew not what to do; whether to leave them and go in search of help, or remain and pass the night with them on that spot. "There was a time," said he, "when I could carry you both together in my arms! But now you are grown big, and I am grown old." When he was in this perplexity, a troop of Maroon negroes appeared at a short distance from them. The chief of the band, approaching Paul and Virginia, said to them,—"Good little white people, do not be afraid. We saw you pass this morning, with a negro woman of the Black River. You went to ask pardon for her of her wicked master; and we, in return for this, will carry you home upon our shoulders." He then made a sign, and four of the strongest negroes immediately formed a sort of litter with the branches of trees and lianas, and having seated Paul and Virginia on it, carried them upon their shoulders. Domingo marched in front with his lighted torch, and they proceeded amidst the rejoicings of the whole troop, who overwhelmed them with their benedictions. Virginia, affected by this scene, said to Paul, with emotion,—"Oh, my dear brother! God never leaves a good action unrewarded."

[Source: Paul and Virginia, translation by Sarah Jones (I think). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2127/2127-h/2127-h.htm .]

*

Paul et Virginie suffers the ironic fate of books that actually changed our thinking. Seeing it through the wrong end of the telescope we're less likely to be struck by its condemnation of human cruelty than to feel uneasy about its message on slavery falling short. (Compare the way we see Scott's portrayal of Jews in Ivanhoe.) It was a passionate denunciation of western civilisation, an assertion of nature over culture. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, frustrated, stubborn, morose, tender-hearted, a devotee of solitude and nature, stood in the line of Rousseau and Senancour. This is the aspect of the book that influenced the last part of George Sand's Indiana. But as the nineteenth century wore on, Paul et Virginie survived only as a sentimental tale. 

*

Isle de France was part of the colonial enterprise administered by La Compagnie des Indes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (I'm simplifying. There had been various trading companies with different names. The Compagnie des Indes was wound up in 1769, though trade continued until the revolution.)

Its base, in S. Brittany (Morbihan) where it was safely out of the way of hostilities with the Dutch and English, was at Lorient, founded in 1664. Across the roadstead was the slightly older Citadelle de Port-Louis. It was built by the Spanish in the 1590s originally, then reconstructed and renamed in 1618-1621. In this case the name referenced Louis XIII. Port-Louis in Guadeloupe (mid 17th century): Louis XIV. Port Louis on East Falkland (1764):  Louis XV. In one way or another all the entries in this particular Wikipedia disambiguation were connected with La Compagnie des Indes. Their biggest trade was with India: muslin, cotton, silk, pepper, coffee, and cowries (for use as currency in Guinea). From China: silk, tea, porcelain, dyes and medicinal plants. From West Africa gold, ivory, spices, gum arabic, and above all slaves, considered indispensable for working in tropical plantations and mines. 

Isle de France/Mauritius was a useful stop for replenishment on the immense sea journeys to Pondichery and Canton, but the island could also be productive in its own right. Sugar plantations, worked by slaves, proved the most profitable industry.  

[Images are from the 1997 guide to the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, now located within the Citadelle de Port-Louis.]

*

Jean-Marie Gustave (J.M.G.) le Clézio (b. 1940) is a French-Mauritian author (he also has ancestral connections with Morbihan). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008. Here's an extract from Désert (1980), translated by C. Dickson (2009).

When she enters the room used as a workshop, Lalla hears the sound of weaving looms.  There are twenty of them, maybe more, lined up one behind the other in the milky half-light of the large room where three neon tubes are flickering. In front of the looms, little girls are squatting or sitting on stools.  They work rapidly, pushing the shuttle between the warp threads, taking the small steel scissors, cutting the pile, packing the wool down on the weft.  The oldest must be about fourteen; the youngest is probably not eight.  They aren’t talking, they don’t even look at Lalla when she comes into the workshop with Aamma and the merchant woman.  The merchant’s name is Zora; she is a tall woman dressed in black who always holds a flexible switch in her hands to whip the little girls on the legs and shoulders when they don’t work fast enough or when they talk to their workmates.

‘Has she ever worked?’ she asks, without even glancing at Lalla.

Aama says she’s shown her how people used to weave in the old days.  Zora nods her head.  She seems very pale, maybe because of the black dress, or else because she never leaves the shop.  She walks slowly over to a free loom, upon which there is a large dark red carpet with white spots.

‘She can finish this one,’ she says.

Lalla sits down and starts to work.  She works in the large dim room for several hours, making mechanical gestures with her hands.  At first she has to stop, because her hands get tired, but she can feel the eyes of the tall pale lady on her and starts working again right away.  She knows the pale woman won’t whip her because she is older than the other girls working there.  When their eyes meet, Lalla feels something like a shock deep inside, and a glint of anger flares in her eyes.  But the fat woman dressed in black takes it out on the smaller girls, the skinny ones who cower like she-dogs, daughters of beggars, abandoned girls who live at Zora’s house year-round and who have no money.  The minute their work slows down, or if they exchange a few words in a whisper, the fat pale woman descends on them with surprising agility and lashes their backs with her switch.  But the little girls never cry.  All you can hear is the whistling of the whip and the dull whack on their backs.  Lalla clenches her teeth; she looks down at the ground because she too would like to shout and lash out at Zora.  But she doesn’t say anything because of the money she’s supposed to bring back to the house for Aamma.  To get even, she just ties a few knots the wrong way round in the red carpet.

Still, the following day Lalla just can’t stand it anymore.  When the fat pale woman resumes whipping Minna – a puny, thin little girl of barely ten –  with the switch because she broke a shuttle, Lalla stands up and says coldly, ‘Stop beating her!’

[Source.]

A very comprehensive interview with J.M.G. le Clézio by Maya Jaggi (2010):

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/10/le-clezio-nobel-prize-profile .

Here's an extract:

Back in Nice [from Nigeria] aged 10, Le Clézio "knew nothing about school rules or shoes". His parents were first cousins, and "very closed in on themselves. I grew up in a Mauritian bubble in France . . . I had the feeling of not belonging, but still living with French culture. That gave me this awkwardness that's not solved till now." While his father loved English literature, "my grandmother hated the English, a tradition with the old French Mauritians. I couldn't choose sides." His forebears belonged to the sugar plantocracy, but lost their estate in a family feud and scattered, becoming judges or doctors. The Prospector (1985), which Atlantic will publish in the UK next year, depicts such a family loss in 1890s Mauritius as an expulsion from Eden, yet incorporates myths of the colonial encounter, from Robinson Crusoe to Shaka Zulu. Its tale of a dispossessed son, who finds his idyll with a woman descended from maroons (runaway slaves), links the quest for gold, and the crushing of canecutters' revolts, to the Somme and the war engulfing Europe. Le Clézio's descent from slave-holders shaped his scepticism towards the Enlightenment. "I can understand better than most the contradiction between the idealistic civilisation and religious morals of Europe and what they did with the slaves, because the root of the evil is only two generations away from me," he says. "Maybe this has fed my need to fight against the abuses of modern civilisation. Maybe it's inspired my novels – it's present in my mind."

fostergræs / foetal grass

I'm getting close to completing the Duolingo Swedish course, and I guess I might move on to Spanish but I've also had the passing thought of trying another Nordic language, Norwegian or Danish. 

Anyway it was this passing thought that brought me to a poem by the Danish poet Olga Ravn (b. 1986), found on the excellent Lyrikline site (where you can hear her reading it): https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/dk-olga-ravn-7771 . I'm interleaving Martin Aitken's English translation. 

DK – Olga Ravn  / Denmark - translation by Martin Aitken

Åbent: hvilken kirurg, der tipper vores skål, et spejl som forsvar mod Medusa,

hvem skal nu nære sig ved hendes bryster, din smukke, din grimme mund,

  To be determined: what surgeon tips our bowl, a mirror to protect against Medusa,

  who shall now be nourished at her breasts, your beautiful, your ugly mouth,

som jeg nærer den slange, der er mine gule, mine bløde sweatshirts, min creme,

den kolde creme, jeg smører ud over ansigtet, det samme trættende ansvar ved at elske.

  as I nourish the serpent of my yellow, my soft sweatshirts, my lotion

  the cold lotion I smear across my face, the same tiring responsibility of love.

Mit ansigt er fyldt med pornofilm, forbrugsgoder, blå blomster der forsvinder i mælk,

mit fædreland, fostergræs, mit modersmål, min tunge er tung af kød,

jeg bærer mine forældres mærke som en kønssygdom fra den elskede.

  My face is filled with porn, consumer goods, blue flowers that vanish in milk,

  my fatherland, foetal grass, my mother tongue, my tongue is heavy with flesh,

  I carry the mark of my parents like a venereal disease from a lover.

Hvidklædt hvidklædt, hjertets fitness, en lille grøn sten i det grimme sand ved stranden bag huset,

den velkendte strand, dit ansigt, lukket i søvn, det hedder ikke noget.

  Clad in white, clad in white, the fitness of the heart, a small green stone in the ugly sand

  of the beach behind the house, the familiar beach, your face, closed in sleep, it has no name.

Medusa, jeg ser hendes ansigt i de lakrøde søer, langt væk, belyst af solens første stråler,

af skov og krat og barnets sengetæppe, mønsteret på det ligner en stor hånd,

  Medusa, I see her face in the lacquer-red lakes, distant, lit by the first rays of sun,

  by forest and scrub and the blanket of the child, its pattern resembles a large hand,

tidligt på dagen ligger disen over kysten, senere sender havets store krop sit lys op ad gaderne,

vi har holdt vores vi løst i hænderne, nervøse, vi har gjort hvide indkøb,

  early in the day the mist lies over the shore, later the great body of the sea sends its light up the streets,

  we have held our we loosely in our hands, nervous, we have purchased white groceries,

vi har kølet kinderne mod muren, overophedede turister i kærtegnet, hvide sten,

et enkelt insekt kravler henover, et enkelt klistret bær,

  we have cooled our cheeks against the wall, overheated tourists in the caress, white stones,

  a single insect crawls across, a single sticky berry,

jeg vågner i sommerens klare mund, mine øjne er dækket af dine slimhinder,

morgenen er gammel.

  I wake up in the clear mouth of summer, my eyes are covered by your mucous membranes,

  the morning is old.

Martin Aitken has also translated Olga Ravn's novel De Ansatte (2018) as The Employees (2021).

Reviewed in The Guardian by Justine Jordan: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/12/the-employees-a-workplace-novel-of-the-22nd-century-by-olga-ravn-review-am-i-human

A sampler of The Employees: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e3944e85771557f6f2a42f6/t/5f55e7e8020c314b1fe716a4/1599465450160/Extract+from+The+Employees+1-23.pdf

Here's a couple of extracts from it:

STATEMENT 004

It’s not hard to clean them. The big one, I think, sends

out a kind of a hum, or is it just something I imagine?

Maybe that’s not what you mean? I’m not sure, but isn’t

it female? The cords are long, spun from blue and silver

fibres. They keep her up with a strap made out of 

calfcoloured leather with prominent white stitching. What

colour is a calf, actually? I’ve never seen one. From her

abdomen runs this long, pink, cord-like thing. What do

you call it? Like the fibrous shoot of a plant. It takes

longer to clean than the others. I normally use a little

brush. One day she’d laid an egg. If I’m allowed to say

something here, I don’t think you should have her hung

up all the time. The egg had cracked when it dropped.

The egg mass was on the floor underneath her and the

thready end of the shoot was stuck in the egg mass. I

ended up removing it. I’ve not told anyone before now.

Maybe that was a mistake. The next day there was a

hum. Louder than that, like an electric rumble. And the

day after that she was quiet. She hasn’t made a sound

since then. Is there some kind of sadness there? I always

use both hands. I couldn’t say if the others have heard

anything or not. Mostly I go there when everyone’s

asleep. It’s no problem keeping the place clean. I’ve

made it into my own little world. I talk to her while she

rests. It might not look like much. There’s only two

rooms. You’d probably say it was a small world, but not if

you have to clean it.

STATEMENT 015

I’m very happy with my add-on. I think you should let

more of us have one. It’s me and it’s not me at the same

time. I’ve had to change completely in order to assimilate 

this new part that you say is also me. Which is flesh

and yet not flesh. When I woke up after the operation I

felt scared, but that soon wore off. Now I’m performing

better than anyone. I’m a very useful tool to the crew. It

gives me a certain position. The only thing I haven’t been

able to get used to yet are the dreams. I dream that

there’s nothing where the add-on is. That the add-on has

detached itself, or perhaps was never a part of me. That

it possesses a deep-seated antipathy towards me. That it

hovers in the air above me and then starts to attack.

When I wake up from one of these dreams, the add-on

aches a bit, and it feels as though I’ve got two: one where

it’s supposed to be, and, floating just above it, another

one that can’t be seen with the naked eye, but which

comes into being in the darkness where I sleep, arising

out of my sleep.

Just a couple of weeks back, The Paris Review published another long piece by Olga Ravn, A Memorial for Those Accused of Witchcraft, translation by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/03/16/a-memorial-for-those-accused-of-witchcraft/

Extract:

Johanne Tommesis, burned, August 24, 1612

Kirstine Lauridsdatter, burned, September 11, 1612

Mette Banghors, burned, December 7, 1612

Volborg Bødkers, escaped and convicted in absentia, June 7, 1613

Annike Christoffersdatter, burned, June 14, 1613

Anne Olufs, burned, June 26, 1613

Karen Eriks, suicide in prison, August 30, 1613

Maren Muremester, burned, 1613

Maren of Ringsbjerg, burned, 1613

Maren Bysvende, suicide in her well after receiving a summons to appear in court, 1613

Kirsten Væverkvinde, burned, 1613

Birgitte Rokkemager, burned, September 18, 1615

Else Holtug, burned, November 6, 1615

Mette Navns, burned, 1615

Johanne Muremester, burned, 1615

Magdalene, Søren Skrædder’s wife, burned, 1615

WHERE: Køge, Denmark

MARCH 3, 2021

All morning, Køge has been shrouded in fog. I took the train here. I’ve walked down Nørregade. All the stores are closed because of the pandemic. Still, a few people are out. It’s about ten o’clock. I haven’t been here since December, the day before everything shut down for the second time. For years now, I’ve been reading and thinking about those accused of witchcraft in Køge. Not with any objective in mind—it’s been a kind of hunger. I want to understand what time is, what four hundred years of time is.

On the side of the house on the corner of Nørregade and the town square is a commemorative plaque: here happened the køge holy terror, 1608–1615. It isn’t a memorial for the burned but for those who burned them. The plaque was put up in 1911 when Køge Museum opened in the building across the street. It was supposed to be a kind of promotion for the museum. The women who were accused of witchcraft and murdered (or committed suicide) aren’t mentioned.

The first time I visited here was August 2019, and everything was on the verge of withering. I was three months pregnant and I came to visit these women’s graves. It was only as I was standing in the town square, the wind rolling against my face and my hair swept up—I could hear the cries of seagulls—that I realized there were no graves because the women had been burned. What did they do with the ashes? The site of the fires is now occupied by Norske Løve, a former hotel; now I think that normal people live there—anyway, there’s a buzzer by the door. 

Since that day, I’ve visited Køge regularly. I go there to approach the ones who are not mentioned by the plaque. I pass by the river that runs through the town like a live wire, crossed by a number of small bridges. I’ve read about so many women in the archives who’ve drowned themselves and their children here. I walk down towards the roundabout, past Blegdammen and to the corner of Kongsberg Allé. Here lies the narrow green corridor, traversed by the stream, where those accused of witchcraft are said to have gathered.

MARCH 6, 1613

There lived in Køge a godforsaken witch by the name of Mette Banghors.

This woman, at the behest of Satan and her companions, went out to the stream located immediately outside of town and conjured the devil with the intention of leading him to the house of Hans Bartskiær.

Then she aimed to conjure him in the likeness of a rat.

Then Satan answered that he wouldn’t rise because, he said, “I have horns and you have none.”

Then the impious witch went and placed a pot on her head, conjured him anew, and said: “Now I have three horns; now, come on up already.”

Then he rose from the stream in the likeness of a rat, and she brought him to the home of the aforementioned man.

This was all confessed by Satan’s prisoner, after which she was burned along with many other witches who were revealed and burned.

A slightly rewritten source from the footnotes of Køge huskors (The Køge Holy Terror) by Johan Brunsmand, with an introduction and notes by Anders Bæksted (Ejnar Munksgaard, 1953).

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 6 April 2022.

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna -- until recently Ranunculus ficaria) is an odd plant in lots of ways. 3 sepals and 7-12 petals; those are bizarre numbers for a dicotyledon. I have also seen them called sepaloid tepals and petaloid tepals, which makes a great tongue-twister. The sepals and petals are distinct, but I do see the point. It's the rather tough petals, with their darker undersides, that do the work of protecting the flower in rainy weather. 

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 6 April 2022.

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 6 April 2022.

Various subspecies are recognized. The two common ones are:

1. Ficaria verna ssp. fertilis (previously known as Ranunculus ficaria ssp. ficaria). Diploid, forming lots of seed (full achene heads). The standard ssp. of the Atlantic fringe, and still the commonest ssp. in the British Isles, especially in wilder places. 

2. Ficaria verna ssp. verna (previously known as Ranunculus ficaria ssp. bulbilifer). Tetraploid, forming little seed (incomplete achene heads) but spreading by bulbils formed in leaf-axils of flowering stems. The standard ssp. on the European mainland. Common in the British Isles and apparently spreading, especially in areas of human activity. Possibly native, more likely introduced, e.g. in the soil of garden plants grown in European nurseries. 

The two subspecies are difficult to tell apart until flowering is almost over (around the beginning of May). It then becomes obvious which plants are producing bulbils and which form complete seedheads.  

[This information comes from Michael E. Braithwaite's interesting paper in British & Irish Botany 2(3): 215-222, 2020: https://britishandirishbotany.org/index.php/bib/article/download/50/83/220 . ]

Based on my own very limited observation, plants that produce late flowers tend to be ssp. fertilis.

Bulbils forming on Ficaria verna ssp verna. Frome, 24 April 2022.

Ficaria verna ssp. verna

Ficaria verna ssp. fertilis 

Wikipedia names three other Ficaria species. They all look pretty similar. On the basis of limited internet searching, Ficaria fascicularis is a small alpine that grows in Armenia (also known as Koch's Buttercup). Ficaria ficarioides, with crenate leaves, grows in Greece. [I couldn't find out anything definite about Ficaria popovii but I think it's a synonym of one of the other taxa.]

But it really isn't much of an exaggeration to say that there is essentially only one Ficaria species. The polymorphism yet lack of speciation is another mystery about such a widespread and successful plant. 

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 6 April 2022.

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 28 March 2022.

I have not a doubt but he,
Whosoe'er the man might be,
Who the first with pointed rays,
(Workman worthy to be sainted)
Set the Sign-board in a blaze,
When the risen sun he painted,
Took the fancy from a glance
At thy glittering countenance.  

(from William Wordsworth, "To the Same Flower")

Various parts of the plant can be eaten at various times, avoiding peak protoanemonin (the Ranunculaceae toxin). In particular the post-flowering root tubers can be sautéed and are reportedly delicious:

https://www.geoffdann.co.uk/lesser-celandine-tubers/ 

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 30 March 2021.

The name Lesser Celandine is incredibly ancient. It is a herbalist's name. Such a common plant must have acquired popular names too, but I've yet to see a list. One common alternative was Pilewort (reflecting the striking resemblance of the clustered root tubers to a bad case of piles, and thus its presumptive medical value for sufferers). 

As far back as Dioscorides' De materia medica (c. 50 - 70CE) the plant has always been paired with the botanically unrelated Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus). It is of the latter plant that Dioscorides says that its name arises "because it springs out of the ground together with the swallows' appearance and withers with them departing. Some have related that if any of the swallows' young ones is blind, the female parents brings this herb to heal it" (2-211). Nevertheless in  Swedish svalört ("swallow-wort") means Lesser Celandine. The name for Greater Celandine is skelört, the prefix derived from Chelidonia. 

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna) alongside Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus). Frome, 5 April 2022.

Here is Dioscorides' entry (presumably with some later interpolation) about the Lesser Celandine:

2-212. CHELIDONION MIKRON

Chelidonia minor (which some have called sylvestre triticum) is a little herb full of little feet, without a stalk (compact), with leaves similar to cissus [2-210 -- Ivy], yet much rounder, smaller, tender and somewhat fat. It has many small roots from a single place, growing close together like wheat grains, but there are three or four which grow out long. It grows around waters and marshy places. It is sharp like anemone, ulcerating to the outside of the skin. It takes away parasitic skin diseases and scabbed nails. The juiced roots are put into the nostrils with honey for purging the head. Similarly a decoction of it gargled with honey powerfully purges the head, and purges all things out of the chest. 

[Source.]

Here's a rough and literal translation of most of the entry for Ranunculus ficaria in C.A.M. Lindman's Nordens Flora (this is the 1901-1905 text as revised by Magnus Fries in 1964  -- I'm not totally sure of those dates). Obviously Lindman is writing from a Swedish perspective (and hence is talking about the bulbil-bearing ssp. verna). 

Lesser Celandine differs from other Nordic Ranunculus species in that it has only three sepals and numerous long-slender petals. ... The species is low-growing and partly prostrate and its flowers appear as early as April and May. At the base of the flowering plant are a number of tubers among the other thread-like or string-like roots. Even when the plant is just a little seedling and puts out its first leaf, there arises in the leaf-axil a bud which produces a club-like tuber, and when the plant has become somewhat larger it soon bears a whole bunch of them. From the small buds that belong to these tubers, far from all develop shoots or stems, so the task of this bunch of tubers is to serve as a food supply for the flowering stems. In the leaf axils there are bulbils which are released from the parent plant and grow into new plants. In Lesser Celandine's case they are rounded or oval and consist in the main of a short, thick root. Their colour is whitish brown, and where celandine grows in quantity they sometimes strew the ground in such large amounts that they have given rise to stories of "a rain of wheat". The mature fruit of Lesser Celandine is less frequent, as is often the case with species that have a strong vegetative reproduction. 

[It's evident that Lindman is here describing spp. bulbilifer.]

The name "Ficaria" was already used by botanists before Linnaeus and refers to the fig-like (or pear-like) shape of the tubers.  .... Like other true spring plants the celandine is strongly periodic. When the June warmth becomes too great the plant disappears and survives until the following year only as bulbils and tubers. It thus belongs, together with e.g. Yellow Gagea and Corydalis species, to the

 spring aspect of deciduous woods and groves. 

Lesser Celandine is commonly found within the region of large deciduous trees with stray occurrences further north. It is native through Europe and as far as western India, and has been introduced into North America.

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 31 March 2021.

Wordsworth knew the plant from an early age, but in another sense, a social sense, he did not know it. It had been, so to speak, a person he had not been introduced to. Then, in his early thirties, a relationship formed, recorded in his three Celandine poems. 

Modest, yet withal an Elf

Bold, and lavish of thyself,

Since we needs must first have met

I have seen thee, high and low,

Thirty years or more, and yet

'Twas a face I did not know;

Thou hast now, go where I may,

Fifty greetings in a day.

(from "To the small Celandine")

In a hazel coppice: Lesser Celandine, Wood Anemone, Bluebell. Frome, 20 April 2022.

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 25 March 2022.

White forms are fairly common, and are sold in garden centres. You can also get varieties with doubled petals or dramatically orange-yellow with chocolate undersides.

White form of Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 25 March 2022.

A glassy form of Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 2018-ish.

A tawny-backed form of Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 8 April 2022.

A tawny-backed form of Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna). Frome, 8 April 2022.