Canal Bank Walk

Carl Larsson

Canal Bank Walk



Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.



Patrick Kavanaugh
from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin
 

“Grow with nature…” I like that. People as plants. I can’t say I comprehend this poem, but certain parts of it seem so true. (I’ve decided it’s good not to know everything, to be in the process of learning, and have a sense of my ignorance. We want answers, we think everything should be knowable, graspable, and as it were –masterable (not a word, I know). But what a miserable world that would be.)  The lines that really get to me are these – “O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web of fabulous grass and eternal voices…feed the gaping need of my senses…for this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven from green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.” I don’t know what Kavanaugh meant to say, but I do know that Eden-call, that longing for a world unworn, where I am new as well, clothed in field and sky, and growing with nature. Yes, I know that.