I just looked out of the small side window and saw this. It’s half-ten and still light in the east, I wonder what time it will go dark at Land’s End.
I love those chimney pots, whatever time of year it is and whatever the weather they remind me of this from Eliot’s Preludes:
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimneypots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
Very evocative. The last line makes me think of the lights along the Embankment in Winter. A wonderful sight.
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
I love that – reminds me of Ginger in Black Beauty.
Off the Page on R4 1.30 today is worth a listen again re poetry if anyone missed it.
I used to light those lamps. Fame at last!
M. le etc…
No one is more famous than you.
Great stuff isn’t it.
Black Beauty, now there’s a tail.
It had me in tears at the end when I read it as a youngster.