Hogacre bees

There’s no road, just a path
between Coke cans, nettles
michaelmas daisies gone wild.
ISAAC’S PARTY someone has chalked
next to a blue arrow.
The bees are across a railway bridge
and swathes of unmown grass—
a new brave hive
on a wide wooden stage.
They are very small, not furry, one
 climbs up my leg, slow and effortful.

I listen to the whirr of traffic
from the ring road
and watch a few circle
in a casual bracelet rather like midges, but bees definitely
bees who are here, who will dance their way
around the fires of rough sleepers
and under the songs of the pylons
tiny, improbable, channelling sweetness. 

-- Dorothy Yamamoto

Dream bee

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Antonio Machado, quoted in Queen of the Sun

'A quivering shiny brown black purse'

Sitting after lunch we heard them outside, & on Sunday there they were again hanging in a quivering shiny brown black purse to Mrs Thompsett's tombstone. We leapt about in the long grass of the graves, Percy all dressed up in mackintosh, & netted hat. Bees shoot whizz, like arrows of desire: fierce, sexual; weave like cat's cradles in the air; each whizzing from a string; the whole air full of vibration: of beauty, of the burning arrowy desire; & speed: I think the quivering shifting bee bag the most sexual and sensual symbol. 

-- from Virginia Woolf's diary, quoted by Olivia Laing