Aug. 1, 1771:

'A neighbour of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks that the owls about this village hoot in three different keys, in G flat, or F sharp, in B flat and A flat . . . The same person finds upon trial that the note of the cuckoo . . . varies in different individuals . . . about Selbourne wood, he found they were mostly in D: he heard two sing together, the one in D, the other in D sharp, who made a disagreeable concert . . . As to nightingales, he says that their notes are so short, and their transitions so rapid, that he cannot well ascertain their key . . . This person has tried to settle the notes of a swift, and of several other small birds, but he cannot bring them to any criterion.'

*

Lost in the lanes of Berkshire and east Hampshire
(you can step in the same village twice)
after Burghclere chapel, Stanley Spencer's murals.

(SALONIKA, 1917:
          'A diary of a man who was killed
          chronicled the weather day after day'

'I had a Gowan's & Gray's Claude Lorraine
in my pocket
                    & a repro. in it
of his "Worship of the Golden Calf".
Wonderful pastoral scene, & a lot of vases,
women & men dancing

. . . why doesn't everybody chuck it
& behave like this'

                                        The importance of labour
on small intensive tasks
- washing floors, the preparation of bandages -
while the dead rise from the churchyard,
upper torsos shake hands . . .

                                        the hills
above a lone English village and those
in Macedonia where a red cross
laid in stones serves as a sign to aircraft.

*

At Selborne, vapor trails above The Hanger,
the zigzag (Gilbert White's construction)
overlooks radar domes.

In the Selborne Arms, a half-pint
of elderberry cordial, Booker T's
'Time is tight'.
                        White's house
hidden by scaffold,
his great yew down in the gales
of 1990.

'The air . . . soft, but rather moist
from the effluvia of so many trees; yet
perfectly healthy and free from agues.'

                                                            West
through New Alresford, skirting Winchester
with the Nashville Teens on the car CD
(who were neither teens nor had set foot
in the States).

---

Quotations are from Gilbert White, 'The Natural History of Selborne' and Adrian Glew (ed), 'Stanley Spencer: Letters and Writings', Tate Gallery, 2001.

Copyright © Laurie Duggan, 2003.