In May's Gaud Gown

The visiting magpie WAS eating our moths.  The Captain caught him at it and has put some vaseline on the balcony rail, which seems to have worked.  There can't be much nutrition in a moth though. It is all worrying for both moths and for baby magpies.

And we cannot feed the birds around here, as it would instantly attract flocks of seagulls to our block of flats.

I feel a bit melancholy at the moment, so here are two strange and rather lovely poems about the sadness of May. But why is it sad when it's so beautiful? Maybe it's because we are all dying in the middle of the newness, the green leaves, the blossom, the freshness of Spring?  We are not renewing ourselves as everything else seems to be.

It is certainly more obvious when you are well past your sell-by date, as I am now.

MAY   by Christina Rossetti

I cannot tell you how it was
But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and sunny day
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born
Between the blades of tender corn;
The last egg had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird foregone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was,
But this I know: it did but pass.
It passed away with sunny May,

Like all sweet things it passed away,

And left me old, and cold, and gray.

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/may/


MAY  by  Karen Volkman

In May’s gaud gown and ruby reckoning
the old saw wind repeats a colder thing.

Says, you are the bluest body I ever seen.
Says, dance that skeletal startle the way I might.

Radius, ulna, a catalogue of flex.
What do you think you’re grabbing

with those gray hands? What do you think
you’re hunting, cat-mouth creeling

in the mouseless dawn? Pink as meat
in the butcher’s tender grip, white as

the opal of a thigh you smut the lie on.
In May’s red ruse and smattered ravishings

you one, you two, you three your cruder schemes,
you blanch black lurk and blood the pallid bone

and hum scald need where the body says I am
and the rose sighs Touch me, I am dying

in the pleatpetal purring of mouthweathered May.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55530/may-56d2373a7826d

Of course I may not be understanding Karen Volkman properly, as her poem has the obscurity that seems to be required of poets these days. But that is how I read it - that in the newness and freshness of May, we, the damaged children of Adam, are all dying.  Our lives seem as quickly gone as the life of a rose.

That is true. Alas.

And she uses language in such a powerful, such a beautiful way.  This has been a favourite poem for many years.

Keith sent us a video of his parents' (my in-laws) wedding, back in the 1940s.  How young they all were. And how happy they looked.  And yet most of them are gone now, in what seems like the twinkling of an eye.

A rather solemn Aunt Bea - still with us, thank God - and still looking good - presided as chief bridesmaid.   

But whatever our age, we can be spiritually renewed, every day, IF we listen to our loving Creator, Jehovah, who is the Source of life and energy.  And in time He will restore us to life and perfection that our first parents so tragically lost. That will happen during the Thousand Years foretold in the Book of Revelation.

It will be a wonderful time - with even more wonderful times ahead.

And in harmony with that thought, it was the Circuit Overseer's visit last week. And his first talk was about being inspired and strengthened by the example of the prophets of old.  He talked a lot about Daniel - his faithfulness both when he was a young man and when he was old.

Daniel was taken in exile to Babylon as a teenager, and lived, in Babylon, to be very old. So he had about 80 years of waiting for all the Kingdom promises to be fulfilled.

And what is more, he knew it would not come in his lifetime, as he was given that vision of the march of the world powers. He knew that many things would have to happen before God's Kingdom came. It is so well worth studying Bible prophecy - vital to do so! -  and I might say a bit more about this in some of my next blogs.