I Remember…

I once declared that I was going to learn a poem a week to keep my brain active. (That was in my April 2019 post Learning Poetry by Heart) Well, that lasted all of two weeks, but I can still remember a few lines from the Shakespeare Sonnet that I so enthusiastically selected at the time… 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 

Thou art more lovely and more temperate. 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

That’s it! I can’t remember another word! 

In that 2019 post I included the first verse of one of my favourite poems from childhood, ‘I Remember I Remember’ by Thomas Hood. My Great Auntie Alice gave me a book full of his poems when I was young and that particular one lives on in my mind. I suspect it's because I’m so obsessed with nostalgia. He’s remembering the house where he was born. I can remember the house where I was born. It was a small terraced house. The front door opened on to a tiny lobby with a flight of stairs directly in front of it and the door to the living room and kitchen to the right. I remember feeling safe there, shut away from the big world outside.

Hood talks of the ‘little window where the sun came peeping in at morn’. I used to share a bedroom with my sister when I was very small but I clearly remember the day that Mum and Dad painted the tiny boxroom a pale yellow and told me that it was to be my very own bedroom. It too had a little window and the sun did indeed peep in at dawn. 

Further on in the poem Hood talks about ‘fir trees dark and high’. We had no trees in our tiny back yard and I don’t remember being able to see any trees from my bedroom window but I often thought about Hood’s fir trees. I loved the way he thought that their ‘slender tops were close against the sky’. When we moved into our present house about 30 years ago there were four huge fir trees in the garden. Some days I was convinced that their tops were leaning up against the sky. I loved those trees but sadly each of the four firs succumbed to old age, with bulges at branch joints and risks of collapse. They had to be removed. Nothing lasts forever

Great Auntie Alice is no longer with us, but she knew how much I loved that book. It was indeed a special present. At this point I would normally post up a photo of the book but sadly it too succumbed to age. The pages had long turned brown and they gradually disintegrated beyond repair. We had to put it into the recycling. Like I said, nothing lasts forever… except for that poem which I don’t think I will ever forget. You can read the whole poem on this Poetry Foundation link.

 

Monday evening is the start of Rosh Hashonah (the Jewish New Year).  

Last year I caught Covid the day before Rosh Hashonah. That was the start of a troubled year with worries, upheavals and health issues, not least for my lovely big sister who struggled with her health and died in June. 

I have the apple and honey ready for tomorrow evening. Here's hoping it will help us in our prayers for a sweet and fruitful year.  Would I be pushing it to also pray for peace in this troubled world of ours? Surely it's worth a try. 

To all those who celebrate it I wish you a Shana Tova, and a happy year ahead to everyone.