Angel Mine - Cowboy Junkies
Another mis-hearing (see "Angel of the Morning post for 30th December), or rather , in this case, a mis-remembering, is Thomas Hardy's poem "A Countenance".
With some poems, you read them so much that one day, without even trying, you realise that you know them off by heart, rather like the songs of your youth. For years, in my treacherous memory, the opening line of Hardy's "A Countenance" was:
"Her smile was not in the middle of her face quite"
which seemed to me to be a line of near perfection, the invisible comma before the word "quite" created by the "sss" sound of "face", and "quite" echoing and broadening the "i" sound of the preceding "smile", so that that the mouth of the reader indeed widens in a smile.
Thomas Hardy, one of Britain's very greatest poets, died today, January 11th in 1928. The poem, "A Countenance", appeared in Hardy's final collection "Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres" published posthumously in the same year.
Pursuing the theme of angels I was enchanted to find that in the video of today's choice the gorgeous "Angel Mine", Cowboy Junkies' lead singer Margot Timmins has just such a smile, one that's "not in the middle of her face quite", exactly and charmingly as I have always imagined it.
But when I looked out the poem, it wasn't her smile, it was her laugh that lacked centrality, which somehow has less appeal to me, both on paper and in my visual imagining. It's a fine poem and you should read it twice, once à la Hardy and once à la Uncle Stylus:
Her laugh was not in the middle of her face quite,
As a gay laugh springs,
It was plain she was anxious about some things
I could not trace quite.
Her curls were like fir-cones — piled up, brown —
Or rather like tight-tied sheaves:
It seemed they could never be taken down. . . .
And her lips were too full, some might say:
I did not think so. Anyway,
The shadow her lower one would cast
Was green in hue whenever she passed
Bright sun on midsummer leaves.
Alas, I knew not much of her,
And lost all sight and touch of her!
If otherwise, should I have minded
The shy laugh not in the middle of her mouth quite,
And would my kisses have died of drouth quite
As love became unblinded?
"Winter Words" is a poetry classic, an old troubadour reflecting on life, turning over his memories, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes full of fun and hope, sometimes despairing of the world.
"Angel Mine" is a song about seeing the goodness in each other, repaying trust with trust, seeing the angel in everyone. Many bad things deeds have been performed around the world in the past year, near and far. Every one, on a macro or a micro level, is the result of a choice by someone and we all have the potential to be angels.
Also included in Hardy's "Winter Words" is a poem that show mankind has changed little in the last hundred years:
Christmas 1924
" Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
It's a new year, a time of hope so we must end on a positive note and believe in the good in each other:
"....Last night I awoke from the deepest of sleeps
with your voice in my head
and I could tell by your breathing
that you were still sleeping.
I repeated those words that you had said
I can't promise that I'll grow those wings
or keep this tarnished halo shined
but I'll never betray your trust
angel mine."
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