Postscript
Gangs
P. J. Kavanagh
Ao correspondent writes expressing ;I surprise to find 'a decent poet rubbl shoulders with scruffs like Ingrams and Waugh'. The 'decent' is kind of him, ants his whole letter is amiable; as, I am sure' ,15 his reference to those august personagei;; But, as I spread compost round raspberry canes in an east, evil-temper t wind, it is the 'rubbing shoulders with' tern I ponder. Would that I did so, with th,hererrir and with others. But it is not the case (0"-oe than in a typographical sense) and Mt' and more I become convinced that most °f go round believing that the world is colnv;
we posed of gangs from which
somehow been excluded. It is as though are born feeling that the world is a swee; shop full of customers and only we llav, our noses pressed against the wind,.°:ur. Possibly this feeling is the beginning °I; It evil (paranoia, suspicion) and our g°°'-far is certainly true that some are born so at from the window they can only dream hat is in it, and a general sense of the unfairn.e_)_, of pavement-position may be the beginnins! of socialism. As for our individual selvtetle the feel of glass on our noses may hose beginning of religion. Even among t've born inside the shop, or those wh° forced their way into it, there is to be fotti"ch a kind of unease, a wariness, if Y°1.1 suspect them long enough; as though they sto.„, the faces outside on the pavement, to
in, may after all have some key denied the aPparently blessed.
, Anyhow, so I ponder, as I try to separate the gluey compost, occasionally clutching at my hat to prevent it whirling off to rub shoulders with my only companions, the COWS which are being blown, like black rags, in the wind. Actually it is not, I suspect, really compost. It is all the kitchen vegetable refuse piled in a garden corner and left to rot. After a while it turns satisfactorily black and earth-like, but un- fortunately during the course of the year People have thrown too many of the wrong things into the wrong bucket and one is really spreading old biros, half-burnt Yoghurt tubs and (above all) silver milk- bottle tops, held together by black gudge. Nevertheless, there is a pleasant sense of returning (more or less) vegetable matter to the earth whence it came and soon the black stuff will have been absorbed and only the biros and silver stuff remain. (Later, in the summer, I may tell a wondering visitor that the secret of good raspberries is a light mulch of milk-bottle tops.) Meanwhile I Ponder 'gangs' and my belief in their near non-existence. In my view we are all strand- ed, more or less cheerfully, on separate rafts.
One trouble with this sense of 'gangs' is that others would like to join the one to Which they presume you belong. For exam- *, our poets have been guilty of going on a bit about the weather, on the whole en- thusiastically (though Cowper named the Present season 'our second Winter, called the Spring'). I have mentioned the weather myself. Now people write to me about how they have spotted the spring's arrival: 'a truly religious moment' ... 'it happened Yesterday!' The effect of all this (maybe that is why I have never been invited to join amgang) is to make me quite contrary, like ary; I stare with watering eyes at the ragged-looking crows and take grim satisfaction in noting that there are around me no signs of spring whatsoever. These People, these old friends, are trespassing on UV Patch. I'll tell them whether it is spring or not. • . Yesterday the wind blew a hole In the roof. I drove round the lanes calling UP to men on ladders, asking whether they
could ? Did they know anybody who guar
Would — ? They were Gloucestershire- ded; a good season, this, for roof- In,enders. I returned to find the septic-tank Was blocked. Nothing to do with the east I suppose, but I mention it as part of ,,e Joys of Spring in the country. When it is .t'iocked whatever leaves the house builds up the
Pipe and works its way back to the hawse until — but I'll spare you that, and it
a,,ws sPotted in time. Priests of the blockage we from the Drain Brain and blew it eriwaY while more tiles departed. But zu-gh' there must be sun because the k-bottle tops are winking up at me. tihorriorrow I shall find a friend and leave rots hill and, a gang of two, we shall walk therra couple of days along the Severn. If is spring down there it shall be reported.
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