In 2012-13 I wrote a series of shorter poems on the months of the year using a similar form for each poem. I posted the complete set of "Months" on 6 February 2015 and it is linked here. In 2014-15 I wrote a series of lyrics on the year's months, called "Months: Lyrics" and that series was posted on 11 March 2016. It is linked here. Between 2019 and 2024 I wrote a third "Months" series, this time concentrating on the sea and littoral and using a wide range of forms. The poems were also much longer and much more discursive. I am now posting them as I revise them. I will put some notes about each poem's form and references at the end of each post. The first poem in this sea series (for March) was posted on Friday 25 May 2025, so scroll down to view, or link to it here.
There are four epigraphs for the entire "Months: The Sea" sequence and they are posted at the head of the March poem.
I forgot to mention in the March posting that each poem carries an ascription of the liturgical importance of the month (for April the "Month of the Resurrection"). These ascriptions were widely used in the pre-Vatican II Church: they were yet another casualty of the destructive consequences of that foolish Council.
Apart from the three Months series I can only find two other poems of mine specifically about April: both are short. "April Wind," written in April 1981, was posted on 31 March 2012 and is linked here. "April Heavy Days," a sonnet, was written in April 2014, was posted on 8 June 2017 and is linked here.
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(Month of the Resurrection)
It scours, it scours – the tide I mean – muscled, deep-bodied,
Clenched in the harbour’s channel like a snake;
Silent and solid, shoddied brown and man-devouring,
It speeds with the world’s ache to reach the sea.
Behind the harbour piles, a sandy ledge of cobbles
Has hoarded droves – tiny, translucent, whole –
Of baby crab shells – obols flung by mindless nature,
Dead before living, goal lacking all point.
All’s tragic, rightly seen: to Physics’ law-bound endings,
Known in the constant grab and gulp of the sea’s
Ruthless inmates, man’s fendings, blazed as self-sufficient,
Are futile stutters, breezed autonomies
And flourishings which, virus-hit or harvests failing,
Collapse to windvane creatures gabbling prayers
To what? An own-self God, ailingly mawkish, neutered
By faint belief. What flares along the shore?
A biplane, first of many as the year relaxes,
Its petrol engine clacking, prop a daze:
Ah, screwed and soldered praxis of the self-puffed skillsman!
Preferring staider ways, the beach-gear ton
Repaint their status-stripey beach huts for the season.
Wonders are many, sang Sophocles, and none
More so than man, but reason soured by lah-dah graces
Is like wax in the sun, gleek and unfirm,
And leached of virtue, its point d’etat, quails like a slavey
Before a herring gull’s unfeeling stare:
Face on, it peers from mauvey wings, its flatline forehead
And hunger-purposed glare, the nostril slits,
The socket slits for the frowned eyes, and the malignant
Projectile of its beak, ivoried, hooked,
Poising to butcher, faux-indignant, red spot gleaming,
Announce, bell and booked, finis for its prey.
Ah, flashes, frozen-stepped, the Four Last Things! – there’s Judgement
Chivvying Death, Bliss, and the Other Place,
And loathsomely that Lodgement gluts on uncount numbers
Who crimefully abased their intellects:
The challenge as at tourney is to win the prize-good
Gifting a knowledge into carking death’s
Meaninged-noneness, its sackhood blackness torn to shreddings,
Or life’s engathered breaths will dry unplused.
What’s horrored, grappled chest to chest, is gross extinction
Which oxymorons meaning, concept, truth;
Nice pecks of ticklish unction, meant-well but degrounded,
Will wrench to uncouth screeching, “Sauve qui peut!”
What saves? Looms like a hard-sought light-gleam in a seaway
The Incarnation, plain but mazed in sight,
The Crucifixion – hearsay? – follows, then Redemption
And Resurrection, bright though bloody-won;
These Four gift comprehension which confirms the purpose
Of world and all in Justice’ final hest,
Their tout intincts the campus which, long centuries fallen,
Now rescued is blessed, conjugal with the One.
(Month of the Resurrection)
It scours, it scours – the tide I mean – muscled, deep-bodied,
Clenched in the harbour’s channel like a snake;
Silent and solid, shoddied brown and man-devouring,
It speeds with the world’s ache to reach the sea.
Behind the harbour piles, a sandy ledge of cobbles
Has hoarded droves – tiny, translucent, whole –
Of baby crab shells – obols flung by mindless nature,
Dead before living, goal lacking all point.
All’s tragic, rightly seen: to Physics’ law-bound endings,
Known in the constant grab and gulp of the sea’s
Ruthless inmates, man’s fendings, blazed as self-sufficient,
Are futile stutters, breezed autonomies
And flourishings which, virus-hit or harvests failing,
Collapse to windvane creatures gabbling prayers
To what? An own-self God, ailingly mawkish, neutered
By faint belief. What flares along the shore?
A biplane, first of many as the year relaxes,
Its petrol engine clacking, prop a daze:
Ah, screwed and soldered praxis of the self-puffed skillsman!
Preferring staider ways, the beach-gear ton
Repaint their status-stripey beach huts for the season.
Wonders are many, sang Sophocles, and none
More so than man, but reason soured by lah-dah graces
Is like wax in the sun, gleek and unfirm,
And leached of virtue, its point d’etat, quails like a slavey
Before a herring gull’s unfeeling stare:
Face on, it peers from mauvey wings, its flatline forehead
And hunger-purposed glare, the nostril slits,
The socket slits for the frowned eyes, and the malignant
Projectile of its beak, ivoried, hooked,
Poising to butcher, faux-indignant, red spot gleaming,
Announce, bell and booked, finis for its prey.
Ah, flashes, frozen-stepped, the Four Last Things! – there’s Judgement
Chivvying Death, Bliss, and the Other Place,
And loathsomely that Lodgement gluts on uncount numbers
Who crimefully abased their intellects:
The challenge as at tourney is to win the prize-good
Gifting a knowledge into carking death’s
Meaninged-noneness, its sackhood blackness torn to shreddings,
Or life’s engathered breaths will dry unplused.
What’s horrored, grappled chest to chest, is gross extinction
Which oxymorons meaning, concept, truth;
Nice pecks of ticklish unction, meant-well but degrounded,
Will wrench to uncouth screeching, “Sauve qui peut!”
What saves? Looms like a hard-sought light-gleam in a seaway
The Incarnation, plain but mazed in sight,
The Crucifixion – hearsay? – follows, then Redemption
And Resurrection, bright though bloody-won;
These Four gift comprehension which confirms the purpose
Of world and all in Justice’ final hest,
Their tout intincts the campus which, long centuries fallen,
Now rescued is blessed, conjugal with the One.
