The Breaking Hour, Kevin Crossley-Holland (London: Enitharmon Press, 2015)

‘Wyde in this world wondres to hear.’   (Boyhood)

It was by chance that I met Kevin Crossley-Holland, as he was one of the English speaking authors the Morges Book Festival lined up last year.   We got talking and somehow zoomed in on the stories of things – he pointed me to some lines that resonated.

This pierced coin,
is it an affirmation of Empire,
a talisman, a love token, or simply
the difference between a full stomach
and going to bed hungry? (Lifelines)

Love-knot, dovetail, harvest bow:
they’ve waited all their lives for you
and wish you everything they want.   (Translations)

The Breaking Hour is a beautiful tapestry of poems, full of human appreciation and subtlety, in limpid English drawing on deep pools of Anglo-Saxon, reflected in the cover design. It has vivid imagery (‘the glacier’s blue teeth’ – Harald in Byzantium) and arresting lines: ‘No, I never commune with my ancestors before breakfast’ (Communion). But above all, a capacity to capture moments of wonder and the emotions they unlock, reminding us that there may be ‘no distance between actual and numinous’ (Boyhood).

‘Sheer wonder it has happened again
– the same geese, these same acres –
and, crick-necked on our doorsteps,
the sudden surge of wild longings?’

(Six Norfolk Poems – Wintering Grounds)

How many thousands of years have men stood and watched great birds migrate overhead.

So when inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frost or thick-descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise, and order, through the midway sky.

(Homer, Iliad, book III, trans. Alexander Pope)

I have also been gently rocked by the almost palindrome balance of one poem’s title: Fledgling Maybe, Maybe Winged.  Sometimes one can feel fledgling flight-poised while other times being full-winged air-borne.  It reminds me also of a family of condors, the young one standing on a pinnacle unsure whether to launch into the beckoning void. One of his parents nudged him off the edge and, hurled into emptiness, his rip-cord instincts effortlessly unfurled wings into perfect planing.

A lovely book which should be slipped into a briefcase on a business trip – it will keep you grounded in the things that matter, or will help you recalibrate after a boring, pointless or otherwise frustrating meeting.   Or just take it in your rucksack on your next hike or bike ride; fine reading atop a munro or under a cedar’s spreading branches.