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.

The Garden

Carl Larsson  - “Apple Blossom.”

from The Garden

What wond’rous life in this I lead! 

Ripe apples drop about my head; 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine; 

The nectarine and curious peach 

Into my hands themselves do reach; 

Stumbling on melons as I pass, 

Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, 

Withdraws into its happiness; 

The mind, that ocean where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find, 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas; 

Annihilating all that’s made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, 

Casting the body’s vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide; 

There like a bird it sits and sings, 

Then whets, and combs its silver wings; 

And, till prepar’d for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light. 

Andrew Marvell

We have a long history, this poem and I. I first read it when I was 12 or 13, and that line "Annhilating all that's made/To a green thought in a green shade." has come with me a long way. (A green thought. What is a green thought? I know what I think it is.) This is only part of a longer poem, but I love this particular part where Marvell does a gloat over summer's generosity - the abundance of fruit and flowers - so much that they almost fall into his mouth or put themselves into his hands. How he trips over them, and is ensnared by flowers - I love that one especially. It's entirely true, too. This time of year is so full of vegetable interest (!) that I can't get anywhere when I go for a walk. I see a flower over here, another over there, and I have to stop and take a picture. The salmonberries are out too, and you could hold your hand under a branch and have them fall into it, they are that ripe. So Marvell isn't even exaggerating much. And the part where he talks about shedding his body and gliding into a tree - it's completely ridiculous and wonderful. This is a man so overwhelmed by nature's extravagance that he goes bonkers. In a good way. I mean, please, ensnare me with flowers.

I wanted a painting of someone sitting under a tree in an orchard, but as with so many other poems, I couldn't get the perfect match. But I love Carl Larsson, and this painting has wonderful colours and subject matter, and it evokes similar feeling (for me) as the poem does.