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About the author: Mary Ursula Bethell (1874– 1945) was a social worker and poet who is considered one of the pioneers of modern New Zealand poetry. Bethell spent most of her life living between England and New Zealand before settling in Christchurch permanently in 1924. She was a mentor to younger local poets, including Allen Curnow and Denis Glover.
Re-verse
In brief: Bethell was a latecomer to poetry, writing her first poems around the age of 50. Those first poems were intended to be simply “metrical messages” included in letters to friends in London – she had no plans to publish them for a wider audience. Her friends eventually persuaded her to collect them in a manuscript for publication. In a letter to her publisher, she explained her reasons for publishing under the pseudonym Evelyn Hayes: “in provincial New Zealand ... publicity is a really painful affair”. When choosing the title for her first book, Bethell insisted that it contain the word “from” to emphasise the original intent of her poems as dispatches from New Zealand to the motherland. The title of this poem immediately signals that Bethell is replying to correspondence she has received, although she omits any indication of who she is addressing.
I N T R O D U C E D BY C H R I S T S E
RESPONSE When you wrote your letter it was April, And you were glad that it was spring weather, And that the sun shone out in turn with showers of rain.
Reverse
I write in waning May and it is autumn, And I am glad that my chrysanthemums Are tied up fast to strong posts, So that the south winds cannot beat them down. I am glad that they are tawny coloured, And fiery in the low west evening light. And I am glad that one bush warbler Still sings in the honey-scented wattle . . .
But oh, we have remembering hearts, And we say 'How green it was in such and such an April,' And 'Such and such an autumn was very golden,' And 'Everything is for a very short time.’
By Mary Ursula Bethell From From a Garden in the Antipodes (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1929)
70
Why I like it: Nowadays the ease of instant messaging and the neverending scroll of social media have replaced letter-writing as a primary line of communication. Although our smartphones can keep us superconnected to our friends and family around the world, the instant updates can feel fleeting and ephemeral. Do we know more or less about distant family members because we can see what they have for lunch? At first, Bethell’s poem appears to offer little in the way of revelation or opinion. The topics she touches upon are as prosaic as some of the things we might see on each other’s social media posts – the weather, her garden, birds – but the final stanza pivots towards more philosophical territory, casting new light on what she writes about. Her own and her friends’ “remembering hearts” recall brighter days, but are also cognisant of life’s fleeting nature. And yet there’s something hopeful about this rumination on mortality and the inevitable passing of time. In this poem, memory is a powerful tool with which to summon the small comforts of the past. The intimacy of a personal letter heightens these comforts and gives them a new, special meaning.
