GREEN UTOPIAS REVISITED

Back in the Spring of 1993, I attended a weekend workshop led by Jonathon Porritt on the theme of “Green Utopias” held at Dartington Hall (1) in Devon, whose genius loci seemed ideally suited to the subject. Although the workshop fell rather short of “Ecotopia”, something of  this spirit stayed with me for another year or so, and I went to Findhorn (2) in Scotland in the Autumn of 1994 to attend a “World Work” Conference (3)

Perhaps signalling the end of  “salad days”, my green utopian phase, at least intellectually, seems to have biodegraded  in the mid-1990s,  but I realise now that it has been a long-standing background – and sometimes foreground – theme in both my personal and professional development. I intend, therefore, to explore once again the theme of green and other utopias, in an age now widely regarded as almost wholly dystopian, in this and my other blogs.

1 www.dartington.org   2 www.findhorn.org  3 www.processwork.org

LOUD SING CUCKOO !

With so much bad news about the environment around just now, including the decline in Cuckoo numbers, I’m so delighted that the bird which visits my own patch is in better song than ever this year.

So much so that I’m strongly reminded of the medieval English poem “Summer is a-coming in”, a version of which is given below:

Svmer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med and springþ þe wde nu
Sing cuccu
Awe bleteþ after lomb
lhouþ after calue cu
Bulluc sterteþ
bucke uerteþ murie sing cuccu
Cuccu cuccu Wel singes þu cuccu ne swik þu nauer nu

Sing cuccu nu
Sing cuccu
Pes
Sing cuccu
Sing cuccu nu

The modern translation is as follows:

Summer is a-coming in,
Loud sing cuckoo!
Grows seed, and blows mead(ow),
And springs the wood new–
Sing, cuckoo!

Ewe bleats after lamb,
Lows after calf cow;
Bullock starts, buck farts,
Merry sing, cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo, well sing thou, cuckoo:
Nor cease thou never now!
Sing cuckoo, now, sing cuckoo,
Sing cuckoo, sing cuckoo, now!

May Day 2011 – The Lady of the Waters

“Botany Bay”, South Worcestershire