The Story Behind the Bowl

Recent visitors to manaros have admired a new addition to the ornament, a beechwood bowl, and often ask what is the story behind it.

This bowl was made by Miriam Jones, a wood turner from Llanengan, a small village on Hell's Mouth. More of her work can be seen at www.Miriamjones.co.uk. This bowl was specially comissioned by us in Welsh and English. The words come from a poem by Philip Larkin concerning a tomb in Chichester Cathedral of Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and his second wife, Eleanor of Lancaster.

The hand guesture is unusual in a mediaeval tomb and leads the poet to reflect on what this meant, leading to his conclusion in the final line "What will survive of us is love." On learning of the likely cost of what politicians call "social care", Larkin may well be right!

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,   

The earl and countess lie in stone,   

Their proper habits vaguely shown   

As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,   

And that faint hint of the absurd—   

The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque    

Hardly involves the eye, until

It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still   

Clasped empty in the other; and   

One sees, with a sharp tender shock,   

His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.   

Such faithfulness in effigy

Was just a detail friends would see:

A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace   

Thrown off in helping to prolong   

The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in

Their supine stationary voyage

The air would change to soundless damage,   

Turn the old tenantry away;

How soon succeeding eyes begin

To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths   

Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

Each summer thronged the glass. A bright   

Litter of birdcalls strewed the same

Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths   

The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.   

Now, helpless in the hollow of   

An unarmorial age, a trough

Of smoke in slow suspended skeins   

Above their scrap of history,   

Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into   

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be   

Their final blazon, and to prove   

Our almost-instinct almost true:   

What will survive of us is love.