Kathleen Raine

It is true that the fields are wet and that the birds have
scattered
but that is all - the fields are not in mourning! The landscape
endures
the rites of summer and deaths. The landscape remains that
country
love prefers and makes its tableau's in. Perhaps the images that
are played
out there change but the essential remains the same -the girl who
sat
on a rock is the learned one of later years, those later years are
present
from the start. Yet it was always poetry which claimed the allegiance
of heart
and mind. It was always poetry which guided the hand and the life it fed
therefore
though the elegy takes its proper place the lyric is not suspended.
The fields
are wet but that is the aftermath of a summer's outburst and not the
condition
of the season. You would have thought it right to die at high summer.
You would
have approved of the scattering birds -for such things were the kernel
of mystery
for you where nothing was chance or immune from the images you found
in the fields,
the birds, and the outbursts of rain. The England you claimed as being the
true
one was Coldridge's Platonic one of rite and symbol. Blake opened these
for you
as no other could. You lived there spurning the rationally of the thirties
rooted
and certain of what you embraced as being more true than a milk float
dawdling
down a lane towards the housing estate. Your concern was the defence
of ancient
springs, of the magic of language and humility in the face of myth. You
repeated it
in those few letters exchanged between us but even there you were
somewhat aloof.
Was that the price of a solitary stance against the crudities of the age?
Was that
your true ambition? Love was volatile and not always successful but
poetry
was always faithful and held its primal sway in that lost country where it
was at home
and which you traced the outlines of. Let it hold sway now. The lost country
is minus
one in this world where poetry continues in other mouths and hands to fulfil
its own
ambitions. Lady, the fields are wet and the birds have scattered but that is
only
a temporary
break in the flow of the day. The birds will return, the fields will dry and
summer
will continue
with its appointed ways into autumn and winter. Therefore these words for
you -
a gratitude
for those verses which hold the core they were drawn from - as they are here
drawn
from memory now that you have recently learned to die in the proper way
having
lived a lifetime by its light.

^

Biography

Though I have lived in Belgium for over twenty years I have only recently returned to poetry and recent work has or is due to be published in Poetry Salzburg Review; Sheeresman; Transference; M. A. G.; Drunken Boat;
Terrain; etc.