The Sign-Post.

It didn’t start off as a book at all, merely as a resolution to read more poetry, to read in fact a new poem every day. But before too long, I discovered, as I jotted down my thoughts on the poems I was finding, that my notes were turning into a sort of diary, and what I was writing was  fast turning into a book about reading poetry, and eventually that book found its way into print.  It’s called A Bracelet of Bright Hair and you can read more about it on my website  http://www.francesthomas.org/

Since I feel that each new enterprise deserves a poem to set it off and get it going,  I looked for a poem to start this blog. After all, as Sigmund Freud said, everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.  The poem I’ve chosen  is by Edward Thomas, that charming, damaged and difficult man, whose grave in Northern France we visited earlier this year – another thing I’d like to write about before too long. This poem brings to mind the more famous one by Thomas’s friend Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, about journeys and choices, their seemingly arbitrary nature and their profound reverberations. Curiously, Frost hinted that his poem was in fact partly a sly dig at Thomas, who was famously indecisive when it came to making choices. Frost makes a choice – but he muses on what might have happened had he chosen the other way. It can be read, and usually is, as a life affirming, positive poem.  Thomas’s poem is altogether bleaker; a cold monochrome pervades the first few lines, and the characteristic despair kicks in at the end of the first verse;  At twenty you wished you had never been born.  But then a second voice interposes itself, the voice of the Other Man, the mysterious doppelganger who accompanies Thomas in so much of his writing, and seems to offer, if not  a happy ending, at least some sort of reconciliation. Death will put an end to all, but the poet, at sixty, might be content, after all, to be here or anywhere talking to me/ No matter what the weather on earth/At any age between death and birth, To see what day or night can be… Of course, Thomas never made that sixtieth birthday, but he crammed a lot of experience, good and bad,  into the thirty-nine years that he lived, and this is a poem of mature years, reflective and  meditative. A good way for me to start  this venture, anyway.  Where shall I journey, O where?

 

The Sign-Post         Edward Thomas

 

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy,

And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry

Rough long grasses keep white with frost

At the hilltop by the finger-post:

The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffed

Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.

I read the sign. Which way shall I go?

A voice says: You would not have doubted so

At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn

Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.

 

One hazel lost a leaf of gold

From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told

The other he wished to know what  ‘twould be

To be sixty by this same post. ‘You shall see; but either before or after,

Whatever happens, it must befall,

A mouthful of earth to remedy all

Regrets and wishes shall freely be given;

And if there be a flaw in that heaven

‘Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be

To be here or anywhere talking to me,

No matter what the weather, on earth,

At any age between death and birth,

To see what day or night can be,

The sun and the frost, the land and the sea,

Summer, Autumn, Winter Spring, –

With a poor man of any sort, down to a king,

Standing upright in the air

Wondering where he shall journey, O where?’

Well, there are many reasons to regard this as the best of times. I’m lucky enough to be living with Richard, my lifelong partner, in a most gorgeous part of Wales. Every morning there’s something new and lovely to see from our window, changing light on the hills, the network of trees, shadows etched into soft green slopes, red kites circling in the sky, fast moving clouds during the day and a dazzle of stars at night.
I’m lucky to have two daughters who still speak to me, after what – looking back now – seems a somewhat haphazard and muddled, though well –intentioned, sort of mothering. I have two beautiful grandchildren, whose own mum and dad are making a great job of their parenting.
We were lucky to have spent our sixties catching up with our travelling, four visits to India, trips to Egypt, Greece, Sicily, Spain, Pompeii, all the places we meant to go to when we were younger and busier, and never did.
I’m lucky too, in that since all I ever wanted to do in life was be a writer, I can look at a shelf of books, properly published, with my name on them. Some have even won prizes. I’ve written all sorts of books, baby books, adult novels, a biography, I’ve contributed to a book of children’s poetry and some short story collections. My ideal level, though, seems to be stories for girls of about 12-14 – the age when I was a most avid and involved reader. I’ve got plans in this direction, which are some of the things I want to talk about in this blog, and I’ve also made a tentative start on a longer term plan, which is to be the biography of a well-known woman writer, and I shall be talking about that too. I want to write about poetry, too, and how reading it can inform and inspire your life.
So that’s the good stuff. The bad stuff sidles up sneakily alongside now. Two bad things to be precise. Last March, Richard was suddenly taken ill with what might very well have been a fatal heart attack, but was fortunate enough to be rushed to hospital in time, and patched up. He’s doing well now, but his condition is something he has to manage carefully and will always have to do so. Then about two months later I had a diagnosis of cancer – myeloma, a nasty one. Well, what do you say about cancer? This isn’t intended to be one of those Brave and Heartwarming narratives about My Cancer Journey. Cancer’s a bugger. It elbows its way rudely into your life without a by-your-leave, won’t take no for an answer, and doesn’t budge. You all know the dinner guest who refuses to take the hint when everyone has long gone home, and continues to sit there, a complacent grin on his face (it’s usually a him, I’m afraid) telling tedious stories without noticing that you’re not joining in the conversation, your eyelids are drooping, and all you want to do is load up the dishwasher and get to bed. Well, that’s cancer for you. It stops you doing things like going on holidays, walking in the hills, spending precious days with your grandchildren, and instead mucks up your bodily functions and generally screws you up by making you attend to its dreary monologue. I’m lucky so far in that I have a good medical team and a reasonably pleasant centre to go to, but it’s still a hospital, and now Richard and I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing our various conditions, something I vowed when I was younger that I’d never end up doing. I don’t really feel scared, distressed or depressed by my state.  I’m just saddened that I’ve stopped being quite the person I used to be, and annoyed by the Unwelcome Guest.
I don’t intend to write too much about the Unwelcome Guest, and since this is early days for me, I don’t really yet know how our relationship will work out, only I know his plans for me aren’t good. But I intend to ignore him as much as I can and get on with the interesting things that still remain. He can’t stop me looking, or imagining, or thinking, or writing. There are still lots of things I want to be doing – plans I want to complete. And I mean to do so. So I do hope you’ll drop by from time to time and share some of the good stuff with me. You don’t have to commiserate with me about the Unwelcome Guest – if you’re nice people I shall take that for read, (and if you’re not – if you’re going to be abusive – then I shall delete your comments.) So, welcome to my blog. I hope we’ll be friends.