In Paradisum

An odd moment this morning - an unexpected confluence of ideas of the spooky variety.

There I was multi-tasking, listening to the Faure Requiem and reading September from Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar. Now I know you'll say that such a division of attention is not at all sensible, and you're right. But in my defence I'll plead that I know the Requiem really well, and had listened with close rapt attention just the previous night. I was going to devote maximum attention to the other goodies on the CD after just giving the Requiem a spin for the sheer beauty of its sounds, and as frequent visitors to this Far Place might be aware, it's a bit of a fetish for me to start a new month with a read from mad old Clare, so anything from his Calendar is extremely familiar.

Anyway, I'd got to the lovely lines about supper: Then comes the harvest supper night / Which rustics welcome with delight / When merry game and tiresome tale / And songs increasing with the ale / Their mingled roar interpose / To crown the harvests happy close / While rural mirth that there abides / Laughs till she almost cracks her sides - when it occurred to me that Clare's world is a kind of vanished paradise (not a terribly original thought, I know, not even for myself; it's basically in my mind on every reading of the poem.) This led me to a sudden consideration of the fact that on at least one occasion when I was a lad in Junior School I was asked to consider and describe what I would regard as 'heaven' - I think the teacherly follow-up was that no matter how wonderful my impressions of what heaven might be like, the real thing would be infinitely more felicitous. My impressions were profoundly simple and deeply felicitous: heaven would be endless summer evening games of attack against defence played in front of a pair of posts improvised from discarded jumpers.

And then just as I was considering these twin versions of paradise, in steps old Faure with the In Paradisum bit towards the end of his mass. Blimey! For a moment it was as if I'd actually got there. Not a bad way to pass a Sunday morning, I reckon.