Standing at the house door, revelling in Autumn

A beautiful photo of Crummock Water, newly taken by Paul Bullen

This is proving a particularly beautiful English Autumn. I've been avidly watching the leaves wiltering, and dropping, and forming a splendour of trash on the ground. The pull of hibernation is blowing briskly through the strained mesh of Autumn's trees and I'm busy reading a ridiculously expensive but reassuringly huge 'complete works' of the late Geoffrey Hill which I bought last winter and from which I stolen all the poetic stuff earlier (from a single poem in his collection Expostulations on the Volcano). 

And if you want to hear the late Sir Geoffrey reading some of his own poetry, last week's Three Score and Ten on Radio 3 offered us a chance (from the station's archive). And, startlingly, Professor Hill used his 1970s appearance on Radio 3 to explain that he's not difficult at all and prizes simplicity - something that's not a common impression of his poetry, which is often described as the most 'difficult' in English poetry. 

Please try it and see though, if you dare. Will you hate it or love it? (It's surely far too short for you to be bored stiff.)