I just found this. I wrote it a short while after the suicide of a fairly elderly former neighbour some years ago now, which left me feeling I wanted to honour the things I knew of her, her family, her past, which was also something of the history of our village. I wrote a few things, but felt and feel it is slipping away from me; the distance I have as an outsider is a mixed blessing. The old people are disappearing, and many of the younger ones too, one way and another. Too lazy and guarding of my own space, I don't talk enough, don't ask enough questions, I listen but still miss too much. On the other hand I value what I do learn, I hope I use it creatively but with honesty and respect, without undue romanticising or abusing the inevitable picturesqueness of the foreign...
Under the lime trees of the Sacred Heart
Under the lime trees of the Sacred Heart they learned to sew,
The girls, that was. What the boys did I'm not so sure,
Woodwork perhaps, or telling stories of a man so drunk,
Who lived at La Belle Brise, he drowned in the ditch,
The tadpoles and the salamanders slithering about his head...
It was a happy memory. The sewing stood her in good stead,
Earned her a living, and later, as I saw her in her porch in winter sun,
Seemed to bring her calm, a purpose and a pattern, music in her hands.
The lime trees stand there still, cool and fragrant, densely shading
Other children now, and also wedding drinks and open days,
Grand, whole and unmaimed, escaping saws and winter fires.
They spoke only in French at school, the rule was, fixing firmly
In their merely Gallo-Breton heads, that French was something other,
Harder, colder, finer and more difficult,
Than the kind or cross and working words you spoke at home.
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10 comments:
This is very fine, I think. Many layered and subtle, and a worthy, moving memorial. It reminds me of some of John Berger's writing (as you may have gathered, I have no higher praise).
a fine tribute.
thanks for evoking a bygone age. At my children's primary school, in the darkest centre of Brittany,if a child spoke Breton, even in the playground, they were obliged to wear a clog tied around their neck.
Happily this had changed by the time my two went there!
Thank you three, very much appreciated.
Rosie - happily indeed; heaven knows what they'd get for speaking English... The Breton language, like Welsh longer ago, was unkindly put down. Here they never really spoke Breton ( we must be on the other side of The Line from you ) but the Gallo patois, just as much French as standard Parisian French but developed along a different route, but still the older people especially, but not exclusively, have an idea that 'French' is something separate, elevated, special, rather intimidating, that has to be learned, is not innate to them. Also partly a function of the educational ethos I think...
when the children went to collège, we decided to move back to somewhere a bit less isolated near St Brieuc. No clogs , no Breton (or Gallo) and no English there, but plenty of Turkish and Russian spoken in the playground along with the French. We like a change every now and then...
Ah-ha...
A lovely piece, Lucy!
A lovely tribute to a past that's slipping away.
Tell me of lime trees in somewhat chilly climes, Lucy. We have many citrus in the desert 4000 feet lower than where I live, but I read often of lime trees in England and now Brittany.
Thanks JZR, and Granny J.
GJ - it puuzled me when I was small that they were called lime trees! They aren't citrus at all, but a tall broadleafed indigenous tree, that can grow very old and has very fine timber, much prized by woodcarvers. They are not overcommon hereabouts, generally planted. They have fragrant pale green blossoms which are made into herbal tea - Proust's famous lime-blossom tea (tilleul) as eaten with madeleines. They are sometimes called linden trees, hence in Berlin 'Unter den Linden'.
Thank you, thank you, Lucy -- for years I've been bothered about the "lime" trees in England. At last I know!
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