Forgive me, for I have sinned. Even if it was praying for rain to spoil the Aussies’ summer

“And I have something to expiate: a pettiness.” So ends D H Lawrence’s poem “Snake”. The pettiness in question being the fear that drives him to throw a stick at a snake that has sidled into his garden on a hot, hot day in Sicily. “And so I missed my chance with one of the lords of life.” I loved that poem as a boy and years later made a pilgrimage to the garden in order to experience the heat, taste the fear, and think about the idea of expiating a pettiness. The phrase has a lovely sound, as though, in a reversal of the Eden story, it’s the snake hissing the judgement.