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| 4. ..DECEMBER | ... |
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At the close of a dull December day, Amelia builds a fire in her unused parlour; rough, sweetfibred logs from Winters pen cradled
awkwardly on knuckled splits of kindling, the thin plumes of hidden flame. I adore her seriousness and the proud way she wills her fire be Fire. The chill hearth of stone, ashed and hard, the chimney's darkly treacherous tunnel, they have Winter's voice and barren breath to daunt the wavering flamebuds, the sagging scowls of smoke. We pile on more logs. Bright, commanding flames weave round and among them, teasing and trying, till the sturdy quartertrunks and barked groins begin to hiss and sing. The new heat's fluctuant glow fires her face, engleaming her eye's grave cóntent and running with redgold her tumbling hair. She is as pleased as a child, as boastful as a witch. The fire is an iron basket of heat, flaring masterfully in the wide hearth. Its fierce strength wakes from their somnolence tall shelves of mute, matter-crammed books, spicedark bronzes of dancing gods, ghosted photographs in silver frames. We are all present in the low-ceiled room, fidgeting in her shadowed firecourt. She lays furs for us on the floor, smiling ahead.
The fire's hypnotic scorch and roar makes the room
___its thick walls, deepset door, and
damp amphitheatre of years___
makes it creak and
hunger. She removes her sweater, freeing from its fibrous jumble her slender arms, the softly furrowed nape of her neck. Beyond the
thin windowpanes, December's dark yeardeath lies in litter. She removes another, lighter jersey and then her shirt. A boulder of black
wind rattles the ill-fitting sash. She steps out of her skirt, her magnified shadow looming above. Outside, dim unshaped branches picket
the vacuum of the winter sky.
Her naked body as bare as a new-peeled fruit...mine as tense and careful as a blade. We make love at a division of temperatures, silently,
watched by the fire's darkening reflections. The room feels crowded, my back exposed to spite and envy. Who knows this? Who knows it?
This ancient cottage has me.
And lie now still in one another's arms, equalled, adrift. In the draught-quibbled hearth, ash falls helplessly on soft ash layer. The fire has
eaten the logs to a famished grotto. Those not fully burnt are weak and friable, surrendering a panic of sparks as they cave and settle.
Something homeless taps against the pane.
This must be how it is to die, naked of body, naked of soul; the populous fancy of the world blown like ash on black eternal winds;
the stars coldly closing.
Are these the last embers?
Touch me, someone...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . ...I am afraid to sleep.
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| 5...SOLSTICE | . |
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Walking out under a winter sky which looms like the wall at the end of the World; going to gather as many branches of evergreen
as would satisfy an Historical. The Family have hung an Advent wreath in the sittingroom and there is a large, well decorated tree,
but I want more. Away with this tepid, rootless religion
___this Pretender! I want to worship the Real Royalty. The springs that fed the Old Religion still rise and seep into the world, but they have become overlaid and lost. Now, with the landscape so bare and sparse because the winds have pulled almost every leaf from the trees, I keep seeing glimpses of a secret geography, existing behind or alongside the normal one. There are wild, straggle-edged lanes, low hollows, comfortless fens... places still strong with the power of death and solution. Yesterday, on my way to Amelia's cottage, I climbed a gate into a field -just on impulse. It was like sneaking into a theatre and finding yourself the only person there. It was a large, recently ploughed field, as open and deserted as a Plain of Retreat. The irregular windbreak of trees round its edge looked more like the stiff twiggy skeletons of clouds that had sunk to the ground, while those still living floated peaceably overhead, browsing on the dense airs of the late afternoon, flushed with extravagant colours from the sun's underrays. I felt like the only man within memory...within days of distance. As I waited there, something occurred; too tenuous to be an event, too stupendously musical to be without meaning. A silence descended on everything, as sometimes happens at that time of day, but one ringing with alertness. Birds held their notes; clouds poised; the frosthardened earth gleamed like exposed brownbone, like a coldcrumb skull packed with subsurface intelligence, watching... and the sun began its year's last dance, tumbling by helpless minutes through veils of redwreathing mist. Then a great door opened and as the cinders of time spilt onto the planet's hearth the Ancient of Kings, all sorrowing flame and sunblood running from leafless thorn, fell from the rim of the world to the deep lament of a chorus of earthbound stones. I have dragged back odoriferous armfuls of winter greenery and hung and draped them from every projection: darkly polished jewels of holly, curved scaly branches of fir, the haired twists and tricorn of ivy, the seminal blisters of mistletoe. It feels as though the house has been overrun by a tribe of earth-dwelling pagans, gathered for their Yule-feast. They have come with all their kith and kine, fouling the air with candlesmoke and gummy amber, exuding their oily-green musk in every corner, as they follow their Lord into a warm underground refuge, safe from the iron tread of gaunt, megalithic winterghosts above.
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| 6...JANUARY | . |
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A day of two days, skymingled like crossed dreams; an interfugue of centuries, so old this house...these airs... In the kitchen-garden, bound by a wall of crumbling, clayclogged brickwork, it seems the season itself has done dour husbandry; clearing and cleaning these earthbeds-reserve; laying them out, bare and coldfallow. As though in an illuminated calendar, I saw One walking calmly through January's frozen hall, observing men with slender dogs-at-heel hawk burdens of firewood beside fields as curved and meetly bed as barrelstaves. He museth, that Master, alone in his herb garden, at rods marking vanished rows where the last late growth sank invisibly down. Yea: how strict-strong the Winterways of God. I, too, stand hypnotised by the faint motion of greyed, previous string-ends being stirred by a waiting, snow-leashed wind; in reverie. 0 Reverens Four gates this garden has: one Westward, to the house; one to the South, beyond which lies my Lord's goodgarden of mazed walks and honeyed fleurs; one opening Easterly upon fields and folds; and the last, where we go now, a sagging picket-gate leading to an orchard of apple, damson, cherry and pear; all grown age-green, low, and overentwined. It is starting to snow; the flakes spilling individually out of the rough air and releasing a tiny glisten as they melt into the fabric of brick or branch. The task today is to thin out the centre of an apple tree and coax it into bearing more fruit. A stepladder stands ready and the stern Herballist, in widebrimmed hat and guild-apron climbs slowly with saw in hand, approaching the insleeping tree as though it were live and large. Flakes of snow balance on our black sleeve-fibres whilst above us the sky masses its armed grey hundreds.
What a marvel the telephone is: you cup ear to this handsome blackbone and
___lo! There she is, attendant.
___Hello, She says. Then we listen to each other's existence for long unspoken seconds.
___It's started to snow here, I finally tell her, as though waking one pillowed beside me.
___Here too, She affirms.
Messages for we two alone, silently sifting the white miles down. How linked we are. How carefully we savour it.
She is calling to break the arrangement we had made for next seeing each other, an unexpected obligation having arisen. Even
though we make another date for the day after tomorrow it is still an effort of self-denying will to ring off. It takes several minutes;
minutes when scraps and murmurs of speech toil along the cold windwarped wires but the mind-to-mind is instant and unbroken.
She's the first to put the receiver down, being of stronger mettle.
Outside again, the air is like a steel trap set with the darkening urge to snow, and the flakes breaking out of it are larger than they
were, alighting for longer. It is no matter; there is no warmth like that of love.
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