"The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural, I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palm of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses."
"Snow" by Louis Macneice
Over sixteen years ago now, I was up a ladder painting walls in Cambridge Blue and Ivory Lace - the colours of summer skies and vanilla ice-cream - when I realised. Just a moment between heartbeats when I knew there was life unfurling inside me. The room was suddenly rich.
Several weeks later in a room suddenly dark they showed me her tiny frame wriggling in a halo of light on a flickering screen and another smaller body, wrapped in shadow, frozen in time. Twins. World is crazier and more of it than we think. Viable and non-viable. I weighed the words but couldn't stop the world from tilting. The drunkenness of things being various.
And I have lived that way since - holding joy in one hand and sorrow in the other. We light candles to celebrate and grief wells up from an underground spring. The fire flames with a bubbling sound.
This is me in midsummer - more than glass. I walk among bright pink roses and simultaneously leave my tracks out there in the snow.
