Suffolk: birds, reeds, Hölderlin and Bruisyard



photo copyright Ashley Dace



I’m staying on the edge of Blythburgh, a few minutes’ walk from the marsh on the River Blyth estuary.  Have just been there to see what birds are around at dusk.  There’s a bird-hide down a path through the reeds.  I wish I’d brought the connection that downloads photos from my camera; as I haven’t, this is someone else’s photo. 

Mostly it’s a bird-city here, even a gull-slum – but just now, though it’s low tide, there were only a few: an avocet taking long-beak swipes at its own reflection in the mud; a backing group of 3 more (oh, they are so sweet); a curlew whose white-underneath tail end made it look as if it was wearing a too-short tutu each time it upended to jab the mud; a few shelduck showing up well in the dark; some redshanks; a few smaller waders hard to see but maybe dunlin; and a helmet-like duck head that when the rest of the bird emerged would have been exotic, except that it was a mallard. 

When I lifted the binoculars to look at the far shore, I was startled to see giant black shapes lumbering along, which were cows. 

By the way, I’m not a bird expert but like watching them, it’s a way of getting transported somewhere, not quite sure where...  I have also seen some bearded tits!  Yes, that’s a bird, believe it or not – and rare, they live  in the reeds. 

As it gets darker, the washed-out reeds turn brown, bright brown in contrast to the grey water/mud/sky.  Yesterday morning around high tide, they were cracking – the sound came from the waterlogged ground they grow out of, so must have been made by the water coming or going.  It was like standing in the middle of a bowl of Rice Krispies. 

The sound reminded me of Hölderlin’s poem ‘Hälfte des Lebens’:

         Mit gelben Birnen hänget

Und voll mit wilden Rosen

Das Land in den See,

Ihr holden Schwäne,

Und trunken von Küssen

Tunkt ihr das Haupt

Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.

Weh mir, wo nehm ich, wenn

Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo

Den Sonnenschein,

Und Schatten der Erde?

Die Mauern stehn

Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde

Klirren die Fahnen.

I cut-and-pasted this from the internet, hope it’s right, can’t check until I get home.  ‘Fahnen’ usually means flags, but the experts think here it may mean weathervanes (usually Wetterfahnen I think, am hampered by lack of German dictionary, not sure how far to trust online ones).  I translated this poem a while ago (because I love it) and wondered if in this context it could mean reeds or rushes.  ‘Klirren’ means clatter, rattle, clink.  And reeds do rattle in the wind, as anyone brought up in the Fens knows; and I wanted to be taken back to the lake.  Now I know reeds can also go snap, crackle, pop. 

        Half of Life                                         by Friedrich Hölderlin

The land with yellow pears

and full of wild roses

hangs down into the lake,

you lovely swans,

and drunk with kisses

you dip your heads

into the pure and holy water. 

But where, oh where shall I find

the flowers, when it's winter, and where

the sunlight,

and shadows on the ground?

The walls stand

speechless and cold, the reeds

rattle in the wind. 

That’s how I translated it.  Thanks to a commentary on the poem by John Irons, here, I’ve found out that David Constantine and Michael Hamburger, who both know a hundred times more about this than I do, have weathervanes or weathercocks respectively, and clatter as the verb.  So that must be right. 



photo from blythburgh.net

Here’s an angel from Blythburgh church, cathedral of the marshes, a very beautiful church so full of light that it seems to float when you’re inside.  Angels are all along the middle of the timber roof rafters.  She (I think it’s a she) may be praying to avert the next flood.  Several of the footpaths I’ve tried walking on have been closed because of flood damage, or for repairing flood defence works; or are signposted for humans but navigable only by  oyster-catchers and wigeon.  The River Blyth runs just below the church, so I hope she is praying really hard.

The reason I’m here is that I spent last week at a seminar organised by the Poetry Trust, bless them, at Bruisyard Hall near here.  Eight of us were extremely spoiled for five days, tutored by the incomparable Michael Laskey and Peter Sansom (hardly need say that the adjective is meant for both).   We all had a lovely time, and I think everyone wrote quite a lot… anyway, there must have been something in the water, or air, or Maggie’s amazing cooking, because for the first time ever I was able to write in workshops.  Usually, even if surrounded by people I know a bit, I just can’t do that. 

So I’m staying up here in order to write, in the hope that more of the magic will stick than would at home.  So far it’s working, touch wood, despite cold-but-soft spring weather and a cottage with lots of books in it, from Dostoyevsky to Woolf, le Carré to Christie, and much else including Do Cats Need Shrinks?, Death by Spaghetti and St Bridget of Sweden.  Plus one of the few Rebus books I haven’t read, which I’m going to read now as an antidote to poetry.  And dvds, and a rather dodgy internet connection which wasn’t working when I wanted to post this earlier.