Sunday, 20 April 2014

The Impermanence of Things



This morning's Something Understood meditated on the theme of freedom. It was presented by an evangelical Christian Spectator writer, who made a passing dig at public sector waste and featured The Beatles' anti-tax classic Taxman among his selection of music.

Of course it didn't really. As if it ever would! 

No, this morning's Something Understood actually meditated on the theme of impermanence and was presented by a Buddhist Guardian writer, who made a passing dig at zero hours contracts and featured a Billy Bragg song among her selection of music.

Still, it wasn't bad, and featured a fine poem by Philip Larkin called The Trees...

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.