The perfect antidote to the current obsession with MPs' tax evasion and fiddling of expenses, is the BBC Poetry Season. Last night, actress Sheila Hancock presented her choice of poetry in the moving and inspiring launch of the series My life in verse. Poetry has played an important part in her coping with grief and finding a way to move on after the death of her husband, John Thaw and in this programme (available on iPlayer for a few weeks), she maps her progression from despair to light through the poems that comforted or inspired her along the way.
Some of her choices were familiar pieces and I simply enjoyed the beautiful delivery of the verse and the wonderful settings including the Fens, Provence. Tennyson is not a favourite of mine, but Sheila's setting of Break, Break, Break into her own childhood experience of friendship, followed by the exploration of its origin in Tennyson's grief over the death of his friend, gave a new insight into the poet and I am encouraged to look at his work again.
The focus of this programme was human relationships and I heard this poem by Primo Levi for the first time. It brings all of our human associations into the compass of friendship and wishes for all the kindest hope of a long and mild autumn.
TO MY FRIENDS
Dear friends, I say friends here
In the larger sense of the word:
Wife, sister, associates, relatives,
Schoolmates, men and women,
Persons seen only once
Or frequented all my life:
Provided that between us, for at least a moment,
Was drawn a segment,
A well-defined chord.
I speak for you, companions on a journey
Dense, not devoid of effort,
And have also for you who have lost
The soul, the spirit, the wish to live.
Or nobody or somebody, or perhaps only one, or you
Who are reading me: remember the time
Before the wax hardened,
When each of us was like a seal.
Each of us carries the imprint
Of the friend met along the way;
In the trace of each.
For good or evil
In wisdom or in folly
Each stamped by each.
And the tasks are finished,
To all of you the modest wish