Ah! Sun-flower Weary of Time
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Ah! Sun-flower
By William Blake
Ah Sun-flower! weary
of time,
Who countest the steps
of the Sun:
Seeking after that
sweet golden clime
Where the travellers
journey is done.
Where the Youth pined
away with desire,
And the pale Virgin
shrouded in snow:
Arise from their
graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower
wishes to go.
Flowers induce
emotions for me. Irises and zantedeschias (calla lilies) heap nostalgia in my
soul as I remember my mother’s Buenos
Aires garden of the 40s. Roses are more complex as I
must associate them with scent and their history. Few of my roses have no
scent. Scent makes them complicated, elegant and mysterious. On the other hand
in spite of her great beauty I cannot feel much for my Rosa ‘Gruss an Aachen’.
How can I feel for a rose with a name you have to spit out?
My Rosemary’s
favourite aconitums with their deep dark blue almost leave me cold. I know they
are poisonous. They leave me cold in the same way a remote and icy blue woman
might affect me if I never get to meet her and prove that first impression
wrong. Aconitum bloom in late summer. They remind me of the winter to come.
But when I see a Helianthus
annuus, the common sunflower I have to smile. I don’t think any other flower in
my garden can make me smile.
My adventure with
sunflowers began somewhere between Madrid
and Málaga on a day of 45 degrees Celsius in 1985. Rosemary, our two teenage
daughters Ale and Hilary and I were driving a rented Renault. Its air
conditioner at full blast did not give us relief. When I saw the vast fields of
sunflowers (obviously to make oil) I had to stop. I remember telling Ale, 16 or
17, to get out of the car for a snap. She complained. But she did pose and even
managed a smile.
Since then a sunflower
brightens up my moment and sometimes even the day.
Our sunflowers come
from Ale’s Lillooet garden. In spring she brings many of them in pots and we
dig them into the back lane where we have the most sun.
I smile and when I
remember Ale somewhere on our way to Málaga I sometimes laugh, too.
Ergi la mente al sole
Flit
Ergi la mente al sole
Flit
