The Lament Of Loss

The two chairs still sit together on their verandah:
his and hers;
the grandparents I never met.

Following a decade of health problems, all had assumed that he would be the first to go.
But it was my grandmother who quietly surrendered:
the unexpected loss of a son, too much to bear.

Life’s meaning was lost.
My grandfather turned his face to the wall.
In a matter of days he followed her.
________________

________________

Dido’s Lament

“Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but Death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.”

From Dido and Aeneas
Music: Henry Purcell
Libretto: Nahum Tate
________________

Picture of the verandah in our family’s home, which my grandfather built, and where my father lived as a child and young man.

Time And Tide

Time and tide may wait for no man,
but the parish hearse is patient..
________________

________________

“The origin of the phrase “time and tide” is uncertain, although it’s clear that it is ancient, and predates modern English. The earliest known record is from St. Marher, 1225:  ”And te tide and te time þat tu iboren were, schal beon iblescet.”

A version in modern English – “the tide abides for, tarrieth for no man, stays no man, tide nor time tarrieth no man” – evolved into the present day version.

The notion of ‘tide’ being beyond man’s control brings up images of the King Canute story. He purposely demonstrated to his courtiers the limits of a king’s power by failing to make the sea obey his command.

That literal interpretation of ‘tide’ in ‘time and tide’ is what is now usually understood, but wasn’t what was meant in the original version of the expression. ‘Tide’ didn’t refer to the contemporary meaning of the word, i.e. the rising and falling of the sea, but to a period of time. When this phrase was coined tide meant a season, or a time, or a while. The word is still with us in that sense in ‘good tidings’, which refers to a good event or occasion and Whitsuntide, noontide etc.”

_________________

Picture taken outside the Holy Cross Basilica, Fort Cochin.
Origins of the expression “time and tide” taken from “The Phrase Maker “.

All Souls’ Night

“What man can live and never see death?
Who can save himself from the grasp of the grave?”
________________

The Feast of All Souls finishes quietly.
As the day gives way to darkness, entire families gather in Fort Cochin’s cemetery.
Candles are lit beside graves of the departed.
________________ 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The community remember their dead.
________________

________________

“Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis…”

“Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them…”

________________

Pictures taken in Fort Cochin cemetery on All Souls’ night.
First quote from Psalm 89:49 (Grail translation)
Requiem passage taken from the opening of  ”Missa pro defunctis” (Mass for the Dead)

All Souls Day

Today is the Feast of All Souls:
The Church remembers “the faithful departed”.

Yesterday, All Saints (All Hallows) was celebrated – a far greater solemnity in the Church’s year.
But All Souls always draws the bigger crowd.
For it touches people’s hearts.

All Souls speaks of ordinary lives.
Of failure, suffering, brokenness and death.
It does not shy away from their centrality to us all.

And this acknowledgement often resonates more deeply than celebrations of success.
We may aspire to great happiness
But we will almost certainly know grief.

The Feast of All Souls points to the inevitability of own death and, more terribly, the death of all those we love.
But it also dares to point hesitantly through grief and brokenness.

All Souls looks at ordinary people, with ordinary lives, and speaks of hope.

________________

________________

Picture taken on the Feast of All Souls, Holy Cross Basilica, Fort Cochin.
“The Day of the Dead”  painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 – 1905). Taken from the web.

“To every thing there is a season…” Part 2

Without and within,

passing years leave their mark

________________

and narrow our views. 

________________

________________

Pictures of a chapel undergoing repairs taken in Kummumpuram, Cochin.

I find the tenor’s voice amazing – like something lifted from the Russian Orthodox liturgy.
Piaf’s power and poignancy is, as always, totally beyond description..
A subtitled visual clip of this performance can be found here. 

________________

Entombed

________________

After a morning in the Red Fort,
our afternoon was spent at Humayun’s Tomb, often regarded as the Taj Mahal in prototype.

________________

________________

________________

________________

________________

________________

Pictures taken at Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi. 

Butchered

________________

Sometimes walking late at night

I stop before a closed butcher shop.

There is a single light in the store

Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel.

 

An apron hangs on the hook:

The blood on it smeared into a map

Of the great continents of blood,

The great rivers and oceans of blood.

 

There are knives that glitter like altars

In a dark church

Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile

To be healed.

 

There is a wooden block where bones are broken,

Scraped clean– a river dried to its bed

Where I am fed,

Where deep in the night I hear a voice.

 

“Butcher Shop”  by Charles Simic

________________

________________

“To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace.”

Tacitus ( 55 AD – 120 AD)

________________

________________

Discarded Dreams

_______________

Life is a stream

On which we strew

Petal by petal the flower of our heart;

The end lost in dream,

They float past our view,

We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,

Crimsoned with joy,

We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;

Their widening scope,

Their distant employ,

We never shall know. And the stream as it flows

Sweeps them away,

Each one is gone

Ever beyond into infinite ways.

We alone stay

While years hurry on,

The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Petals by Amy Lowell

________________

________________

“By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.”

Rabindranath Tagore

________________

________________

“For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.”

Ivan Panin

________________

________________

Taking A Bow

A blog is the ideal forum for requests.

________________

Living so far from family and old friends, I realise that I am unlikely to warrant normal formalities.

But, should the opportunity arise, please bear this in mind.

As the curtain finally closes and I am shunted off to the unknowable, I would love this to be played:

________________

________________

It would make the perfect ending.

________________

________________

Cartoon from The New Yorker

The Rhythm Of Kalam

__________

The sun has set.

With the dying of the light, Kalampattu begins.

The drums start pulsing their hypnotic rhythms.

__________

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

__________

Song, dance and frenzy conjure up dark powers.

__________

__________

Suddenly, my sensibilities are repulsed by what is enacted.

I feel as shocked as any Victorian puritan.

I put away my camera.

__________

Chicken may be gone from my menu for some time…

__________