And about time too, you may say! But since ace service provider Dan of Braeside IT services has added that wonderful picture of my socks, I feel I owe it to him to set pen to paper (and what a quaint old-fashioned notion that is — entirely metaphorical in the current context.)
W.H. Auden was born at 54 Bootham, York, on 24th February 1907. So, thanks to the City of York Auden Society, an event was held, in the building, on the centenary day, and included the unveiling of a stunning sculpture of the old nicotine-stained wrinkly one, made by my old school-friend, Graham High, and which the firm of accountants who now inhabit the building immediately purchased for themselves and the City. Cocktails were drunk promtly at 6, which would have pleased the old chap. and a few of his poems were read.
Later in the evening (after a very acceptable pub meal in the Hole in the Wall, High Petergate) there was an event in Bootham School Hall. Again, the sculpture took pride of place on a table at the front, and there were poetry readings, songs, and a performance of a play by Auden. A number of local poets were present, who each read one of Auden’s poems, and then one of their own. My contribution was Auden’s “Song. Deftly admiral cast your fly…”, followed by this one of my own (with the last 3 Lines of an Auden poem as an introduction):
“…when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.”
W.H. Auden. In Praise of Limestone
there’s a plaque on a house we often pass
- to W. H. Auden, born there — an ordinary house
and round the corner is one John Woolman died in
and up the road, a pub where Guy Fawkes lived
and then, not far away, the upstairs room
my daughters were born in -
where someone else sleeps now and makes love -
in that sunny, morning place
do places matter so?
will my son, born in a hospital
now succeeded by a shopping mall
stroll reminiscent though the outlets
seeking some meaning from where his life began
(though really — it was in that same sister-bearing bed
one frosty night, nine months before)
and did Auden, I wonder, think of
the clay, the gravels, the alluvial moraine ?
limestone was more his thing,
varied, subtle, soluble
and Woolman’s life is not revalued by his death
though Fawkes may regret his move away.
birthplaces pass, are left behind
- deeds, words, those we love
need no blue plaque, or brass,
and yet I’m glad I know these origins
can trace the arc from birth to death,
from little room to little room,
a scaffold, or a limestone landscape.
People seemed to like it. At least it addressed the occasion.
