Roses and Snow

Conversation last night turned to past guests, before Annaghmakerrig was a retreat, when it was personal theatre-friends like Alec Guinness staying here, or since the centre was established. (One person appeared in both, a woman who used to live here, and who lingered here after her death.)

Someone mentioned that when Louis MacNeice stayed there, his room was my room; and that he'd written 'Snow' sitting at the desk, facing the bay window.

I looked up the poem this morning:

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

:-)