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Note on make time

There’s always snow at Easter somewhere, though here it’s partly about the surprise of it.  There’s a different look to the familiar suburban scene when cars, roofs and hedges are clad in snowy blankets.  It shouldn’t take much figuring out that the ‘igloos’ are parked cars; the ‘duvets’ and ‘poultice’ are snow-rugs on hedges and lawns; the ‘crow’s-foot stitch’ is a bird-track in the snow; the ‘green prawns’ are fat leaves of laurel or privet; and the ‘wet burn’ or stream is a shining highway after the snow has melted.  So much is mere imagism, the exactitude of the farfetched, of which technique there are periodic revivals, for good reason; it’s a useful style and there’s seldom enough of it.  Exactitude is difficult.  That is obvious.  If you didn’t notice first time, however, the key word is ‘heal’.  The snow is like a poultice over a wound.  There are other angles to figure, like traces from particle collisions: e.g. the injunction to ‘make time’ for the earth to heal.  Then there’s the mostly two-beat, sprung¹ line, the exceptions being the single-beat pair ‘for the green / prawns’.

Alan Marshfield

  ¹ Sprung rhythm has (usually) a set number of beats and any number of unstressed and half-beat syllables to a line.  The term was coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889).  Also see note on Word Game. (back)

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