For The Time Being

I have been working through W.H. Auden's Complete Poems for several months now. I had almost said I had been enjoying them for several months, but that would not be quite true, as it hasn't been until recently that I've really begun to enjoy them. One opinion I've certainly formed is that the man wrote altogether too much and that his memory would have been better off and more appreciated if he'd dropped a few of those scraps into the fire.

However, when he is good he is good he is very good indeed. So with For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. It is likely that I shall write on this at greater length sometime in the future, but probably will save that for a time when Christmas is really on everyone's mind. After all, what Auden wrote was meant to jar us awake in just such a sleepy, mysterious time as that.

For the time being, I will leave you with a few lines taken from section IV of Advent and strung together into a little mini-series of photographs I've snapped in recent days.