'The burning heart of the mislaid world' ... Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters This week's poem, "My Grandmother's Opal" by Grevel Lindop, is the query to exhibit the past. The final line-and-a-quarter sums up the significance as well as worry of the quest: "this the single spark / saved from the burning heart of the mislaid world". Adrift in attics as well as cupboard drawers, such tantalising "sparks" may be all you have of which puzzling immensity, the person's life, reminding us how little you truly know the people we're closely associated to: the grandparents who died prior to you scrupulously "met" them; which princely great-grandparent you just missed. Perhaps they remind us, too, of the destiny whose past you will sooner or later become the grandchildren, their grandchildren. These apart relatives haunt Christmastime in the culture. To borrow the poem's words, they offer love you can never lapse nor...
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