The lily pads on the little dam felt like delicate embodiments of the human children of all ages for whom the world is at this moment grieving. In wintry colours of flesh, rust and olive they seemed to be finely-sliced cross-sections of brains, floating here now, defying all explanation, delivered to this sanctuary, being breathed by wind, which was sharp and insistent, and combing his patterns persistently towards me. And I wondered whether "the beautiful" really does "change in such kind ways" (Richard Wilbur), and whether there really is a "mercy of wild things" as Barbara Fairhead has written. And whether I was transgressing something by seeing the lily pads in such an unexpected way? There was no contrivance, but it is true that my heart was unable to hear in the clatter of the bendy reeds anything other than a hoarse, multiplicitous grief. The Afrikaans word 'snik' came to mind to describe the sound they made - a perfect onomatopoeiac word to denote the spine-wracking gasps that often accompany intense sobs.
Despite my melancholy state, the communion of lily leaves and wind and water with my bemusement left me feeling no worse. A little clearer, anyway, about the depth of grief mantling our world. As if such a ‘living cemetery' in the sun, whence new blooms will soon spring, is the only way I am given to see the spirits of these many, once-warm beings?
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