Undoubtedly there is an imperative to act, but there is also a need to sit and stare, and savour the gift of all we must strive to save.įrom In Memoriam A.A.H., by Alfred Tennyson It is necessary to hold a balance between this becoming-future and the peace of an evening hour. Our fingerprints are everywhere, with little but the length of days escaping some change wrought by our manipulation. Now an exceptionally warm day can be an omen of humanity’s expansion and consumption, of heat that will change the way we live and drive the poorest to destruction. Progress has dispelled misery but also birthed new anxieties. Yes, there was fear of disease and the panic stirred by the silhouette of a longship appearing down the Ouse. The long-dead masons and glaziers knew nothing about cluster bombs, and their small fires did little to harm the health of the world. Time stands thick in the bulk of the cathedral, the rustic garden bricks, and all that lies below. The grace to say they live in another firmament. Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world’s breathing.
In the walled garden the soil turns up fragments of clay pipes and not far below the surface there will be scaps of Roman detritus – ashes under Eboracum. At one point the scream of swifts breaks in, sudden and insistent, as three sets of scimitar wings slice the evening air. Pigeons flutter hither and thither in alarm. The dog’s ears are pricked: perhaps there is a cat? Beyond the Georgian brickwork of the canonry the large mass of the Minster looms and the cry of a peregrine rises above the murmur of tourists in the precinct. A blackbird calls in agitation from the margins of the lawn. The garden is blissful in July late-in-the-day light.
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