The Berkshire Downs, not open country but deep woodland scaling the hillside. Just after rain, wandering through the heavy feast of rain soaked boughs, green shadows dripping all around me, festering silence, rich but a little sinister. Solitary dog walkers loom out of the stillness, a black labrador bounds up, then disappears into the resiny gloom beyond the gravel ride. There are adolescent Wellington firs, splayed at the base like rainforest trees, large ferns and parties of very young firs clustered at the edge of glades, eager for their share of the light. I lose myself in the rich resiny silence, an hour’s walk seems like a lifetime of tramping, the wood goes on spreading upwards, there are freaks of golden light beyond the thickest trees in the distance, but this suggests the top of the hill not the end of the wood. There is no discernible end. Like Buddha saying that there is no discernible end to time or matter, so long as one continues to believe in them.
gate half open
the gold eaves of the wood
beckon inwardsContinue reading “A Berkshire Wood in Spring”
Geoffrey Hill’s valedictory lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry is powerful final plea to maintain standards in literature. His hectoring, pungently oratorical style has to be heard to be believed. He is irreplaceable. Listen to it here: 
The Solitude of Small Doors, Ananda (Stephen Parr)
Urthona – Buddhism & art 