tongue in cheek

the patina of self

Hilary Mantel chooses her favourite love poem:

Anyone who has lain hundreds or thousands of miles from home, listening to strangers’ rain falling on a stranger’s roof, will respond to the vehement longing in this old, mysterious fragment. It is difficult to believe your lover is alive under the same sky, and the more clearly you can see their room, their bed, the more you feel the piercing pain of separation. The writer sounds cold, alone and perhaps in danger; the reunion is not certain. All the complexity of love is in these lines: the lover is not only home but the journey hone, both the voyage and the harbour.

Untitled, Anon, before 1530

Western wind, when wilt thou blow

The small rain down can rain

Christ, if my love were in my arms,

And I in my bed again