Canal
In all the mornings and nights, going to the hospital and coming back from it, I love my canals. The canals of Venice, of Holland, rivers and great waterfalls and fountains and the waterways of kings' gardens, that people travel far to find beautiful, are beautiful for all the world. But my canal is beautiful for just me.
Its narrow stone-bound curve is hung over by uncared-for plane-trees, and by ragged, jagged, rickety, crooked houses, that lilt and tilt and lean together and over, dingy and dark. The rough cobbled quays have small traffic now, the litter of the canal's old life is gone from them. They are quiet, with no more rough calling and shouting of carters, and turmoil of hoofs and wheels. Sometimes, but rarely, a slow heavy flat canal boat is towed and poled along, through the locks and under the high black bridges. But most times the slow tawny water flows unbroken.
The tawny leaves of the plane-trees are fallen, and lie on the cobbles and in the water. The stems and branches of the plane-trees have black reflections in the water, with the reflections of crazy roofs and chimney-pots, and of tatters and rags of colour from windows and walls.
Sometimes in the mornings, these October mornings of sardius and topaz and sapphire, I find myself singing as I walk along the edge of my canal. It is so difficult not to be happy.