The heat goes on

I wrote about Michael roberts lovely poem, Hymn to the Sun, before the astonishing heatwave hit us here in Correze. I love the way this poem evokes the feel of the area so well - the warm stones and the quick dry lizards round Millevaches - and never more so than during this hot early summer weather. Treignac shimmers in the heat from the early, misty mornings over the river through the still, heavy, silient afternoon and into the long, light summer evening which end with an amazing rose sunset behind violet hills at ten o’clock at night.

Michael’s old women going over the hill in Perigord wore tight bonnets and black dresses. The gentile elderly ladies of our hilltop wear smart shorts and beautifully laundered white tee shirts as they haul heavy cans of water from the commune’s tap to soak their gaily colourful flower pots. All are hale and hearty. Even our 95 year old neighbour who has lived in the same house her whole life, still gets about with emphatic independence. She remembers our house being built in 1932 and we have a photo of her standing on the front steps; a pretty, shy sixteen year old with the wife and the mother of the blacksmith that had the house built and forged all the ornate black ironwork. In this picture our Indian Bean Tree is but a sapling. Hard to imagine this spreading shady umbrella that covers the front terrace so usefully in this heat, standing there will all those years ahead of it. It hasn’t flowered for us yet and we long to see the large white heads nodding over the black iron balustrade.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge talks of an Indian Bean Tree in his beautiful poem, This Lime-tree Bower my Prison. Although neither Indian Bean nor Lime has any feel of prison about it here. The ancient Lime scents the entire garden all day long with a citrusy tang that lingers even when the sun disappears. Or as Coleridge would have it in his timeless way:

Ah! slowly sink

Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!

Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,

Such gloriously rich language that is so seldom heard these days. But when it comes to speaking of heat, there is little to match Hilda Doolittle’s work of that name,

Fruit cannot drop

through this thick air -

fruit cannot fall into heat

that presses up and blunts

the points of pears

and rounds the grapes.

And gathering fruit is just about all we can summon energy to do in these blistering temperatures. But then what more fitting way to spend a sweltering summer’s day hiding in the shade with a bowl of fresh-picked berries still warm from the sun. Some days the heat is so intense that Autumn begins to look like an invitation. Which it is of course. An invitation to join us here in Treignac in September for a wonderful week of exploring poetry, writing, eating, drinking and relaxing. Who knows what timeless verse may emerge under the tutilage of the patient and inspiring Mr. McGough.