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, link to it here; the poem for April was posted on 28 July 2025, link to it here; that for May, posted 20 September 2025, is linked here; that for June, posted on Monday 27 April 2026, here, that for July, posted on Thursday 18 June 2026, here.
There are four epigraphs for the entire "Months: The Sea" sequence and they are posted at the head of the March poem.
Each poem carries an ascription of the liturgical importance of the month. These ascriptions were widely used in the pre-Vatican II Church: they were yet another casualty of the destructive consequences of that foolish Council.
I have written a handful of other poems about August. But first an ancient poem, from October 1981, which is non-specifically set in summer, is "To an Acquaintance Gone Into the Country," posted on this blogsite on 14 July 2012. It is linked here. Two more recent poems are "On a Hot August Day," written in September 2013 and posted on 23 December 2015 (linked here) and "A Mosquito Bite," written in August 2014 and posted on 8 May 2017 (linked here).
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(Month of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
Hwæt!
August for the people | next the purple sea:
The seasons have found stasis, | if sort of, only;
The people, fagged, | have flocked to the resorts,
Blanking the nay-sayers, | their “never send to know...,”
With a grunted guttural | “give us a break;”
Hence, this Sunday | several only
Will chant in church, | in chapel, hosannas
To He who makes clean, | He who invigorates,
(“Were not ten cleansed: | where cloister the nine?”):
Rather, by nine, | wrangling families
Or passing alliances | of loosely-made friends
Will stake the beach, | assert dominion
In the house-high dunes, | foot-hot already
For already the sun | like solder, heat-white,
Has swaddled the shore | with a steam-bath fug:
Like travellers pitched, | there’s towels and chairs,
Windbreaks, barbeques, | and blankets thrown,
Chill case and sunshades | and smattering boom-box:
Bodies are stripped, | bloated with feeding,
Blotched with yesterday’s | blistered sunburn;
A few are toe-paddling | the temperate sea,
Wary so soon | of a wet-body plunge,
Though sterner, task-rapt, | two kayakers
Are pulling their craft | from their portable sheaths,
Eager to engage | with the easy-fall waves:
Haply, the Azores high | has hoist itself
Across the earth’s camber, | accruing fine weather,
If temper-trying heat, | for non-torrid man,
The speech-bearer, now sotto-ing | expletives as midges
And wasps ferret | his pheromone-sweated skin.
Along the beach, | a black-head gull
Winnows a wing, | wobbling on one leg,
The other stretched: | widely, it yawns,
Its brown head moulting, | mouldering to white,
Leaving two dots blobbed, | backed behind its eyes.
The immature herrings, | haphazard in plumage,
Brown-patched as ticking | pulled from a palliasse,
Bully among themselves, | squeaking their long-calls
Like unoiled screws turning, | ignored by the adults
Perched on groyne posts, | picture perfect,
Which, sylphed with glistening | girls’-hair weed,
Slope out to sea, | sinking beneath
The glass-clear water, | graving shadow lines
Like ribs under flesh. | A rich haze
Hangs at the horizon, | happenstancing the distance –
No sky, no sea, | just a screen, pigeon-blue:
A trawler, full-loaded, | levitates through heaven,
Returning to harbour | to unheave its catch,
Its engines evenly | echoing the waters,
A “V,” bay-wide, | vectoring from its stern.
A harrowing heat | like a hand’s clench
Has wrapped all bodies | in its rivelling sweat,
The windlack beach | is a’broil and buzzing
With sun’s radiation, | simmering and raw:
On the prom, a flung | flash of light
From an opening window | pierces a watcher
With a seared lance | of locused heat,
As if Transfiguration | had torn Its way
Into this Adam’s world, | adumbrating truths
Which beach-fun humans | are huffy to resist.
The holiday funfair | is hollering loudly
By noon. The Sizzler, | XLR8TR, [= Accelerator!]
Xtreme Power | and Project Orbiter,
The Super Waltzer, | the Speedodrome –
All scintillate | with screams and laughter,
Cannonading music | and cataclysmic lights,
Dry ice irruptions, | all detonated by
Jammering generators. | Generations mell,
Close-crushed, careening | the colour-bright stalls;
Dazed dogs leapingly | dance on leads,
Gulls corkscrew between legs, | levering up scraps,
And wheelchairs and buggies | byway the crowds,
Dumbfaced as dodgems, | for the dense, the young,
The aged, the crippled, | all aggregate a role
In this middle-earth’s microcosm. | Maddened by fun,
Inebriate of excitement | and odour of meats
Charring at burger stands, | these champions might laugh though
At the groans of Laurence | grilling on an iron,
The moralled animal | murderous to pay cash
To baste him bellowing | in his browning juices,
“Amo” now “odi.” | All afternoon
The humid hug | of the hammering sun
Has hotted the sands, | hammed with folk
Like stolid homesteaders, | stubborn to flee
The stink of the seine nets | slung up to dry,
Poled at the beach top. | A brown bloom
Of suppurating seaweed | slops in the wave-break,
Draping the bodies | of dipping bathers:
A huge crab | in its crenellated shell
Scuttles from the teasing | of a troublesome child.
