I'm sorry but I can't resist another riff on the nature of snow.
Usually, in the morning, I look out the window and confirm to myself that everything is much the same as it was yesterday. It'll probably -hopefully- be the same tomorrow. I guess we all do this without really thinking much about it.
When you look out in the morning and everything is covered with snow it can change, I think, the way we feel about time. It looks like the last time it snowed. It's a view I've seen most years, for years. It doesn't take me back to yesterday - it takes me back to all those years in the past when I looked out in the morning to see snow.
And it's the same. Made afresh but always the same.
I looked out of the window this morning, saw the sundial and realised that, in a way, it explained what I'm trying to say:
I was reminded of the beginning of TS Eliot's Burnt Norton:
Time present and time
past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future
contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All
time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an
abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world
of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to
one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the
memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door
we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in
your mind.
But to what
purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not
know.
*
It's interesting how snow triggers ideas about time. For me the thing that makes me think about time are leaves turning colors in fall.
ReplyDeleteYes. Weather and seasons generally, I think. I guess we paid more attention to the seasonal changes before we invented calendars and clocks.
DeleteOne of my favourite poems - isn;t it one of the four quartets?
ReplyDeleteYes - the beginning of one.
DeleteI've always enjoyed TS Eliot and his words on time are striking. I never thought about it before but like you said there is that timeless feeling when you first discover it has snowed.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the video as well. It is good to see places I will likely never actually visit.
I used to go on the train shopping with my mum to Birmingham. I always looked forward to the arcade and lunch in Rackhams.
Deletebeautiful poetry and photo, snow slows things down I think
ReplyDeleteIt is a brilliant poem. Risky, though - didn't Ezra Pound say 'go in fear of abstractions'?
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