Note by JRW: The following is reproduced from a handwritten letter written by Myatt, undated, but postmarked 21 February 2003.
So here I am, again - in a field in rural England on a day of warm Sun in early Spring (yes - late February is Spring, according to Nature!) sheltered from the still cool breeze by sitting leaning against the wide trunk of an Oak many centuries old, no cloud to obscure the gentle blue.
Midges swirl around a cleft in the trunk while overhead squawking Crows mob a passing Buzzard. I really can smell the Spring as two Robins vie, in territory and song.
There is a joy here, a serenity, that pleases me and makes me realize how foolish I was to - once again if only briefly - return to the milieu of agitating for action in the world, hoping to somehow inspire immediate deeds against what is now an ignoble Empire, forgetting the wisdom of patiently waiting for the real change of empathy and reason.
A fly, warmed by Sun, emerges, to flit and give one more sound of an English Spring and Summer.
How foolish, to negate the reality of this numen by such a return to the way of a past. Maybe, just maybe, a time will soon arise for me to once again live alone, far from this irksome modern world, with only a pen, some paper, as a means of communication.
A rising breeze to briefly, swiftly, catch the ivy that, fulsome, grows, clinging, covering, to green the tree behind, making sounds above the breeze blown branches, wind-bending grass.
How foolish, to forget my own understanding: to forget the remembering, the pain, that shaped, changed, evolved such empathy as I possessed so much that - when alone as now in such places as this - I knew the past, felt the future, and, burdened by such knowing, tried hard to keep away the tears of so many centuries of sorrow, so little insight lived.
So hard, it seems, to renounce the passion of a life, as when a relationship of lovers falters, stalls, restarts to stall again; seldom a clean and sudden leaving. Feelings, memories, linger. And there is guilt. Let us not forget the guilt, the hope; the guilt of a duty abandoned.
Tomorrow, I could have been elsewhere, in a teeming city, talking words of war as if my old hope of inspiring noble deeds to aid those far less fortunate than me was still real in a modern urban world too tired of silence, patience, and too afraid of numinous stillness. I choose not to go; not to speak, and instead will - the goddess permitting - sit here again suspended in time between brown, green and blue.
Near my feet, a small beetle no larger than a large red ant, disappears into a crack opened when the shallow patch of earth - watered over for weeks - dried in sun, wind and early Spring warmth.
There is much mistletoe, gold-green, suckered onto a tree, twenty paces to my right: its Oak decaying with its age and its larger branches gone, storm-fallen. How many passing lives has it felt, known, here where my strength, my remembering, strengthens through Sun?
If I have anything real to leave in remembrance, let it be such words as these: not the strife; not the anger; not the deaths; not the agitation for action. These are the words of a Spring, newly born between Sun and earth, bringing joy to a man whose hands, back and face have borne the cold toil of outdoor work in Winter.
I hope I do not forget this warmth, this beauty, again...
DW Myatt