The Horse Chestnuts
The chestnut trees and the clear blue sky and the morning sun
mirrored in the water of the Thames; the grass was sparkling green
and one heard the sound of church bells all around. In images like
these, Vincent combined observation and imagination to create a
better, more consoling reality.
¬ —Smith and Naifeh, Van Gogh
I catch sight of the white candelabras
in the second spring of my anxiety,
ablaze all over the branches of a large
horse chestnut in the spry spring sun.
It makes me think of hope
for the first time in a long while.
In my twenties, along the towpath in Mile End,
I first noticed that piling up of blossoms
into great ziggurats of green and creaminess.
They sprung me into a summer of hope.
I was married there and had my children,
fished in the canal and felt like a man.
And further back, that boy,
before my father died,
the lone walk to school, my legs cold
in autumn shorts, dawdling
down the road with the horse chestnut in it.
Scanning the verges and the tarmac
for a green spiked mine
that might explode
into my soft hands and concede a conker.
I knew then there could be bounty from those candles.
This sudden noticing of the candelabras
after such a prolonged lent,
with no awareness of any change,
is a sign that some part of me is listening out.
I look up again at each white bell tower,
the potential to grow into the conker clappers
ringing out my hopes towards autumn.
This meeting of the one who observes
and the one who imagines
is the first intimation that I will come through all this.I want to follow my last post with the next wonder that visits us on the heels of the blossom I wrote of last time. That is the towering glory of the horse chestnut with the white candelabras of its own blossom. The poem was written as I was emerging from my breakdown. I had been down cast and oppressed by anxiety but suddenly in May I turned my gaze upwards. I saw the piled whiteness of these triangular beauties. I realised that something was stirring in me that was unfamiliar - hopefulness!
It took me back to a time thirty five years ago when we lived in East London. We had just been married and were living in Bethnal Green, next door to Columbia Road flower market. I would finish work and come home, pick up my tackle and my wife Wilma. We would spend blissful evenings with me fishing and her reading at the canal side. I first photographed those ziggurats of green and creaminess at that time. The urbanity and built up nature of the city made any eruption of nature all the more beautiful and precious.
In the poem I then go back further to my childhood. There was a huge Horse Chestnut on my walk home from school. This green giant held in its twiggy hands, every Autumn, the boys treasure - conkers. We would soak them in vinegar and dry them to a hard bulletness on the Aga. We would then spend hours with our strung conkers smashing them into each other and seeing which cracked and split first.
That boy in me was still listening out for change as he was when I scanned the branches for the green orbs. The quote about Vincent van Gogh and his combination of observation and imagination inspired the last lines of the poem. He recovered from his own breakdown in San Remy de Provence in an asylum. He used his amazing gifts of observation and imagination to present us with a vision of the light infused glory of nature. He made us see differently and that helps us to feel differently and act differently.
I began to experience this difference at the end of the poem. In fact I encountered two subtle parts of myself - the one who observes - anxiety creates hyper awareness, and the one who imagines - anxiety can weaponise this faculty. The counter is to become hyper aware of the green and feathered and furred world. To then turn our imaginary ability into a mouthpiece for that world - imagining what it is saying to us. Then we begin to be free.
This is a most beautiful poem Adrian and paints an incredible picture of your childhood and other times of your life - thank you for sharing it