The sopping Friday
It rained all day today, a cold damp drizzly day with most of the leaves off the trees. In the morning there was heavy fog; I always measure fogginess by whether I can see the hill off to the west of the Alderman Library as I head up the steps each morning, and today it was invisible. The library’s foyer was full of umbrellas. (People here put their umbrellas down near the door when they come in and leave them there until they go, a nice gesture of trust that no one will steal one’s umbrella.) A good day to be indoors; I wish I had a fireplace to sit in front of.
It was a day that reminded me of Edward Gorey’s The Sopping Thursday, of the "damp, drizzly November in my soul" that Ishmael complains of in Chapter 1 of Moby-Dick, and of the opening sentence of Jane Eyre: "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." But more than anything else, today reminded me of Sylvia Plath’s "Black Rook in Rainy Weather":
On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accidentTo set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescentOut of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequentBy bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorantOf whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grantA brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a contentOf sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
I was only going to quote the first few stanzas, but then, after hunting this poem up online and rereading it for the first time in some years, I noticed the utter appropriateness of the bit about "Trekking stubborn through this season / Of fatigue, I shall / Patch together a content / Of sorts." (I think that’s going to be my new tagline.) She’s so stubborn, Plath is, in her refusal to get her hopes up, her wary backing away from anything that looks too miraculous, and yet so poised to see it even so, "even in this dull, ruinous landscape." And isn’t it always the "fear / Of total neutrality," the blank nothingness of apathy, that sets in most readily in a rainy November in a season of fatigue?
And you, Reader? What do you read in November when it rains?
David Bottoms
Philip Larkin
both good November poets
though Sylvia Plath is the more appallingly appropriate (and beautiful in the way wraiths of leaves are when they lie damp and open on the pavement)
Funny; November at the moment is summery and sunny here in the southern hemisphere but I’ve been reading Philip Larkin too. (Fiction though, not poetry).