odourofdevonviolet.com
The Scent That Captures That "1930s Moment"!
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LXXVII
If anything restores the wilting spirits of shrinking violets
Into early evening, apart from a warm reviver –the ambrosial
Chalice of a cup of browny, O to put one’s feet up with
A cup of cha, customary tipple of the violet hour, the spirit’s
Eternal elevenses, sempiternal tea-time, perpetual six
‘O’ clock after that March Hare’s row with Chronos, which
Crowds out Alice in a riot of echoing crockery –With a cup
Of tea in your hand, anything is possible… especially if
Infused with the Vedic spices and clairvoyant vibrations
Of Violet-Scented Tea –favourite of Madame Blavatzsky,
Perfect complement to her “inextinguishable cigarettes”,
Thick Black Russians, for they do say caffeine heightens
One’s psychic receptiveness, nothing like the warm and
Wet stuff to arouse the synapses, put frontal lobes on backburners,
Let the Unconscious trickle up to the surface, tap the vestigial
Pituary gland back into focus, then swill around the tea-leaves
For a spot of fortune-telling at the end, once you’ve sipped up
The last dregs of nectar –nothing quite like a spot of tea and
Clairvoyancy, and a nice bicameral block of Battenburg,
Some pink and yellow checkered sponge to absorb the psychic sap,
All wrapped up in floury yellow marzipan, pinched into
The dip between cup and saucer, going soggy against piping-
Hot porcelain, balanced on the lap –indeed, who was it said,
“There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much
Diminished by a nice cup of tea”…? Ah! Bernard-Paul Heroux,
Whose name used to materialise mysteriously through porous
Paper sachets of Tregothnan, the only English-grown tea…
I like a nice cup of tea in the morning,
For to start the day you see –
And when it's time for bed, there's a lot to be said
For a NICE CUP OF TEA!!!
And about this time of night
When everything's alright
I like a nice cup of Teeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaa!
And around half past eleven my idea of heaven
is a NICE CUP OF TEA
I like a nice cup of tea with my dinner,
and a nice cup of tea with my tea,
and about this time of night
what goes down a treat, you're right,
Is a nice cup of tea
and round about seven,
well my idea of heaven
is a nice cup of tea...
LXXVI
If anything restores the fading roses of the dying day,
The sighing roses of the the dying day, the rose and pinking
Dusky sky, the sunken hour up to purple twilight, violet
Twilight, the violet hour, which since ancient times has marked
Our lowest ebbs, our low-swinging pendulous spirits,
Our tiredness, our death-sense, but also our ends of labours
For the day, the time of clocking-off when circadian
Rhythms slow down to a steady rock until lullabying
Bedtime, rock-a-bying bedtime; that hour of home-time,
Of returning to our nests, our warm or empty nests, our
Fire-lit wholesome hearths, our wives’ or husbands’ pain-
Absorbing arms, or to the shadow-flickered caves of cold
Lonely rooms, unnourishing studios or temporary bedsits,
Dim-lit digs of grim dimensions extemporised by partitions
And screens only half-attentive to our anxieties and
Confessional needs as close twilit relatives, isolated
Fathers, widowed mothers, spinster aunts –but where,
For a kitchenette’s greasy propinquity, there is no separation,
Olfactorily speaking, from the mouldering smells of perishable
Food and violet odours of slumber’s soul-food; this is
The purgatorial quarantine that impersonates ‘Home’ for
The unattached, untouched or chronically reclusive;
The rental Coventry for the out-of-work, or unacknowledged
Community volunteer, the unrecognised shadow-
Philanthropist, the temporary person –alone, the only soul
Who hears the throb of the permanent office as the hubbub
Of Time’s rushing stream that their toes alone know they
Cannot step into twice –who, like some stranded Crusoe,
Or a Polynesian oyster-catcher, prises rusty shells of tins
Open with penknife or spoon-end, then peels off the lids,
Ritualistically, to gouge out soggy globules for supper…
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk…
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
…can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings…
The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins…
[III. The Fire Sermon, The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot]