A FEAST OF TRUMPETS
We are breakfasting in the small summerhouse
near the high back wall of our garden,
and reflecting on a world where malice
seems at the very end of its tether,
where avarice and nonsense are esteemed,
cruelty applauded, and kindness mocked.
Though autumn has begun, the wisteria
that festoons the south side of this bower
is flowering again, the lilac-blue petals
caressing the window panes. Two bumble bees
like plump dancers flit from flower to flower
in the soft, late September sunlight –
with a robin redbreast in the olive tree,
a red admiral on the ivy.
The driest of summers and our brief absence
for two weeks beside the balmiest of seas
shrivelled the plant’s leaves to a papery brown.
We removed them, and watered the roots.
And suddenly the flowers began to appear –
as if the plant’s autumn and winter
had been compressed into merely weeks.
This species was originally from China,
where it still represents a catalogue
of wished-for human conditions – like
prosperity, longevity, love, and wisdom.
At dusk the Jewish New Year will begin,
a time of celebration, reflection, atonement,
heralded by ‘a blowing of trumpets’.
According to TikTok this year’s fanfare
of rams’ horns in a Holy Land of
more than usual pestilential
tribulations will bring forth hosts
of Christians anticipating the Rapture,
ready to rise like balloons, and be welcomed
by the god of the three peoples of The Book,
the god of mayhem, havoc, fire, and famine.
Meanwhile, as yet, the sky beyond the flowers,
is merely azure, and infinite,
empty of souls.
