ISOLATION

This daily isolation, that has so speedily become the norm, must be a particularly painful experience for those who have to endure it without company. 

My favourite narrative poem on the subject of isolation is Tennyson’s, The Lady of Shalott, and I’ve written my own version of it as a homage to the original.

The Lady’s enforced solitude is the result of an unspecified curse and the threat of death looms over her should she attempt to leave the tower where she’s confined.

Her relationship with the outside world is limited to what can be seen, reflected in her mirror, of travellers on the road beneath her window.  

I’ve been fascinated by the tale for many years and struck by a similarity between the Lady’s estrangement from the real world and her use of a mirror to engage with it, and the indoor, screen-obsessed, lives so many people live today.

The tale also brings to mind the enforced isolation that the Covid-19 restrictions have imposed on all of us.

Painting by Sidney Meteyard

SHALOTT

A river, like a passing life,

flows steadily to Camelot. 

Along its bank slim aspens grow,  

wild irises, long-limbed loose-strife,

and, hourly, sloops with cargoes go

to that far place where she dare not.

She moves within a spartan room

where silence like a boulder-weight

bears down on her. 

She may despise 

her morning’s work upon the loom:

a woven history of lies, 

at best half-truths, half-told too late,

but if she does, she puts aside

such sentiments and turns again

to watch the world swim in a mirror

where shadow-shapes, like fishes, glide

and, daily, mysteries occur.

A curse demands she must refrain 

from gazing on the world beyond

her tall, arched window: 

she must view

the passing moment in a glass.

Each risen morning, rosy-dawned,

incarcerated, she must pass

her time by weaving and eschew

a life unscreened, where touch and scent

enliven the most sluggish hearts:

where sunlight warms the dappled shade

and lovers lie enwrapped, content

in their belief love will not fade;

where, brightly, the kingfisher darts

and snap of twig drives startled deer,

in wingless flight, a honeyed wave,

towards the tree-line, darkly green,

where auburn foxes, without fear,

like dark-eyed sorcerers, convene

beneath a leafy architrave.

Where, daily, west wind’s untamed spin 

scrawls patterns on broad fields of grain;

where spring unfolds its giving hand,

and harmony exists within  

an unseen, heady-scented land  

that lies beyond her window pane.

In short, hers is a cruel fate

as, cloistered, she needs must deny

the living world: 

her limpid screen,

devoid of life, can not create  

the elemental shout of green,

the singing river slipping by.

Listen to a musical interpretation of Tennyson's poem by clicking here.