Simon Wilson
Return to Little Gidding
Clouds pile high, grey and unwelcoming. Here and there, shafts of light break through to illuminate a pylon or a skeletal tree. There is little to see in the middle of the winter countryside, and the weight of history is invisible.
Four hundred years ago a religious community moved here. Three hundred years later Eliot came to write a poem as the skies rained fire over London. Fifty years ago a teenager walked the fifteen miles from his home to stare at a small brick chapel and run lines of poetry through his head. It was, as I recall, a late spring day and the larks were singing in the wind.
It is strange to think that there is less time between Eliot’s visit and my first visit than there is between my first and second visit.
I have been saying I must return to Little Gidding, and today, passing the sign, I decided to do so. It is my age. I really must do things while I can. These days I use a car. We sat, isolated in our box and gazed at the chapel, not wanting to intrude, and the only word of the poem I can recall is sempiternal. Returning to the main road, my wife points out two late yellow roses, lashed by the wind, which stand out against the honey-coloured stone of a roadside cottage.
ends and beginnings the distance in between is where my life went —slipped through a crack
About the Author
Simon Wilson has been a poultry farmer, salesman, antique dealer, gardener, and instructor on a Care Farm. He now works in a coin shop and wishes he had tried harder at school.