Note by JRW: The following is an extract from a handwritten letter by Myatt, addressed to me. He dated it One Sunny Day in February.
The Buzzards Are Calling Again
The Buzzards are calling again - it is that time of year when a warm Sun and Winter's rain breathe life into the soil, bringing that beginning which is Spring and which we can both feel and smell.
Exactly a year ago I sat here by this pond on this fallen branch of Oak. It was warmer then - for now a cold northerly wind chills this burgeoning Spring, a little, and there are no insects I can see or hear on, or above, the growing greening grass. Only the Buzzards, the Gulls, the Crows, the breeze in leafless tress and bush. And yet there is a blue above to inspire me - a blue where small cumulus clouds fastly drift and where the vapour trails of aircraft, too high to hear, are spread. On the horizon to my left, altocumulus form, perhaps presaging future cloud and rain. But now, now I sit quite peaceful, but one feeble part of this year's presencing of Nature.
What have I learnt, felt, discovered, known in this year? I have certainly lived - changing - as often, and deeply feeling, as almost always. Love; sadness; joy. Travels; hard work; peace and unease - unease enough to make my head ache and throb at times. And yet - yet I seem to have endured, steadied by this simple life; by this beauty that is the quiet rural England I love.
I shall be sad to leave here - leave these fields, these sounds, these sights, this simple almost reclusive rural life. But work ended, not of my doing, brought down by impersonal economic factors caused far away from here. There is now a returning of one quest. Will there be, can there be, work like this awaiting for me somewhere, again? I strive to find, filling the time between with walks, with words, visits to she who months ago brought a personal joy and love back into my life - she who loves as I love; who gently dreams as I dream.
The breeze is stronger now, for the moment - and ripples the surface of the pond whose waves loudly lap over, against, one of the fallen branches of that Yew there in that corner of this field. Many times, like the growing tree, there by that breeze, I have been swayed - swayed by the sleeping warrior within, who, awakened, has tempted me. So much dishonour in this world; so much I had to again strive to avoid involvement, ready as I was to go to defend the oppressed against the ignoble oppressor. It was, for me, the battle against dishonour that mattered, that called, that awoke - the living of the life of a warrior. It was not the ideology, not the ideas, not the cause, or even the goals, for these were and are mere causal forms which do not, cannot, contain the essence itself even though, sometimes, they may presence part of it, as a Buzzard, circling, presences one small part of Nature's life. What mattered then was the striving - the exhilaration of living which presenced honour in a moment, in an explosion of moments, so raising life up, upwards, towards a new living, a new way, nexion as it was to the essence itself, manifest as this essence was, is, can be, in the honour of a warrior. What mattered, then, was such a presencing by someone to redress the balance and bring some honour back into this world. Thus was I, am I, through such diverse presencing, such diverse involvement, a mystery to some, but not to myself...
So I was swayed, tempted, and several times became alive again, a different alive as I forsook this quiet reclusive peace to travel, to engage, to live for a while a different way. And now, my work here having ended, I strain again against myself, feeling, feeling the presencing of that past, of those moments of life's ecstasy.
But for the moment, in this peaceful moment - the breeze having softened again - I am calm, and hear the calls of Blackbird, Robin, Wren. The Sun still warms, and it would be good to lie here for an hour, sheltered as I am from the wind, to sleep a peaceful sleep and dream.
What of my words, this past year, born of such peace, of such silent wisdom as has kept me here in this place? Have they changed anything, anyone? I do not think so. Are they then as flowers thrusting forth in Spring, born only to die each year, seeding themselves with the hope of rebirth in some future? I do not know, and shall lay this pen aside to close my eyes to I lie on my old coat upon the growing greening grass of one more burgeoning beautiful English Spring.
DW Myatt