Blake's Birthday, Slovakia and more
The Ancient of Days, William Blake, 1794
Sifting through Blake’s poems on the net this evening, in celebration of his 259th birthday (I was looking on the net because I was unable to find a book of his poems, as most of my poetry books are currently barricaded behind boxes in the small bedroom), I stumbled across his poem The Garden of Love.
The Garden of Love
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
I’ve known this poem for most of my life, but it only occurred to me today just how much, and how deeply, it has crept into my subconscious lexicon, when I remembered a poem I wrote eight years ago to mark the death of Adrian Mitchell; The Welcoming Party.
I had consciously and deliberately sprinkled references to poets and poetry throughout The Welcoming Party (Stevie Smith, Ted Hughes, Ginsberg and, of course, Blake himself make an appearance) but hadn’t realised until this moment just how much of a riposte my poem is to Blake's bitter experience in The Garden of Love.
All I was thinking of at the time of writing it, at a conscious level anyway, were Adrian’s euphoric parties, which I attended as a teenager with my father, and how much I thought that Adrian warranted as good a party as one of those, if there were such a thing as heaven. Blake would be there, of course - Adrian loved Blake.
Tonight, though, I saw in my poem a garden that had ‘Thou shalt!’ writ over the door (in big, friendly letters), the briars unbound and all the priests in black gowns sent away.
The Welcoming Party
i.m. Adrian Mitchell
Beyond the lychgate,
the expected churchyard is instead a garden
tumultuous and pungent with colour;
apple trees mingling with cherries,
a snowstorm of blossom, flowers.
All the seasons are hopping together.
Roses jive with sorrell,
blushing young primroses take up
proffered palm fronds and dance amongst the clouds.
White trumpets of convolvulus blurt themselves blue.
The poets and musicians are all here:
Ginsberg jams on his harmonium
with Lennon, Lead Belly and Tom Paine;
Stevie Smith is waving from the lily pond;
Ted Hughes looms like a cliff in the distance.
Just inside the gate
William and Catherine Blake wait naked
in wicker chairs, surrounded by the flesh made word.
Blake stands, extends a hand in welcome
as the sun bursts from a page of memory
sings snatches of freedom with the voice of Lady Day.
The realisation caused a small rush of euphoria, rather akin to the euphoria I experienced just over a week ago at the Ars Poetica festival in Slovakia, surrounded by poets, musicians and other lovely people (it was a four day festival that felt very much like living in a version of my poem, only with a little more rain). It's been a long, slow autumn - it's good, then, to have two moments of euphoria to carry through winter.
So here’s to Blake’s 259th birthday, to the memory of Adrian Mitchell, to poets and musicians, to love, to Ars Poetica and to the return of Innocence. May it keep teasing Experience gently until Experience relaxes and loosens its grip on fear.
The Welcoming Party was originally published in Turning (Headland, 2011)
