I now gather the poems together as a single sequence in the order in which they are meant to be read, i.e. from March to February.
Why March? Before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in England, Wales and Ireland in 1752 the new year began in March which is also the month of the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel to our Blessed Lady. What finer point to begin a series of poems about the observed world?
For the record, the poems were originally posted individually as follows: the poems for March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January and February were posted on 24 February 2014, 21 March, 20 April, 24 May, 20 June, 29 July, 29 August, 27 September, 25 October, 24 November, 30 December 2014 and 24 January 2015.
MARCH
The ache, the ache of existence: winter’s
Stupor irresistibly shaken, old bones
Groan, dry boughs stretch, splitting bark, shedding splinters:
Fecundity ignites in roots and cones.
Dawn light prises sullen sleep; tits and finches
Call greedily, bullying the early growth,
Ignoring winter’s shrunk fodder which pinches
The gut. Lichen bulks up like simmering broth.
Oh, but sinews are stiff, flesh grey, its sap
Barely moistening this slow cold body, galled
By the tug of procreation yet, hands in lap,
Stranded by lethargy, coffined and palled.
The air is lethal, unlocking its grip,
Swelling in warmth to bamboozle the fox
To break cover, the shambling hedgehog to slip
From the kerb, its blood stippling the road like pox.
Reversals are abrupt and perishing;
Viscous fog plasters the sun, throttles crisp shoots;
Puce morning winds curdle the sky, punishing
Shaven cheeks, wan fingers and thought of fruits.
Regardless, the brawn of being explodes;
Every night lithe stems and tendrils seize ground;
Stubborn leaves unwind from a tangle of woads;
Forsythia leaps at the low clouds like yellow sound.
Remorselessly, blood thickens: hide-scarred men
In anguish must forage, fight and build. Again.
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APRIL
Dawn is early: the redbreast has shrilled his claim
Before men rise; later, the thrush’s evening
Ululation pierces the copper flame
Of sunset. Between, starlings are scavenging.
A blue sky convects warmth through the chill air
But soon, beetle-browed cloud like dusk, slings hail
From a freezing wind, smashing petals, stripping bare
The tulips. A drenched leaf flaps like a sail.
The exposed becomes covered. The dead-end nook
Piled with bramble stalks, torn plastic, rotted wood,
Is swamped by rhododendron – a closing book
Composting silence beneath its heavy hood.
Unstoppable, growth multiplies; grass glistens
Under sodden sunlight; grape hyacinth
Shake fists, crowded by nettles, dog parsley listens
For the bee, quailing at the sudden rain’s rinse.
Ah, how the young relax! Their clenched shoulders
Of winter expand, they laugh into each others’
Eyes in a flurry of pairing. That which moulders
Is regenerate; the martin at its nest hovers.
There are losses. A fluffed, sick sparrow huddled
Beneath a hawthorn attracts a barrel-faced crow.
Old men, surviving winter, shrunk and muddled,
Await their predator, whose knock they will know.
Undeterred, magnolias like fireworks spume;
A child exults, lord of both womb and tomb.
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MAY
Announce the illimitable fullness of spring;
It’s there in the magpie’s rat-a-tat flight
And the terror the squirrel’s leap can bring.
Verge grass and spring wheat gyrate in the wind
Dislodging the greedy linnet; unfriendly gorseMuskily blooms whilst irises, determined
As barmaids, loll, magnificently coarse.
Meringue-like cumulus wanders the sky
Worrying the chattering bluebells below;
Damp banks like biers where the dead daffodils lie
Will be purged for new growth by the groundsman’s hoe.
A seawater dusk displays Venus’ pearl:
Since nipping dawn men have been fraught as bees;
Now, placid pigeons roost among leaves whose furl
Glows goldenly in the draining sun’s lees.
Not all is beauty: the rough-skinned dock swells
Grossly, leprous and kibbled, and spleenwortSpoils all; but the laburnum’s butter-curl bells
Are cheerful, and forget-me-not is pert.
The pink emulsioned jay and bouncy wren
Fuss for their young: girls in their summer show
Ripen for mating, root-making, children;
Their men sweat and provide; but if they sow
Shall they reap? Vainglory tempts them to the hill’s peak:
If crossed, will they return with what they seek?
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Dazzles tarmac and field, boiling greatly
And large in the sky. Day’s eternity done,
Rises the moon like beaten pewter, stately
And immense. Honeysuckle chivvies the lanes
With scent, strengthened with the tang of the year’sFirst cut of silage. Men are urgent – thanes
To daylight’s drug, fixing tools, greasing gears.
The ash has tardily leaved above hawthorn
Sudsily frothing; nettles and grasses
Are purple, stifling the curded viburnum:
Dogs dustily tumble in madcap races.
Each morning the blatant chatter of sparrows
Rouses streets like coins rattled in a bowl;
Goldcrest flash in a larch’s dark narrows;
In brakes a pheasant dodges with his red poll.
From waxy buttercups to black-cupped poppies
All is profusion. The cream-cake roses –
Luscious in odour – shadow gentilities
Of pot plants – marigolds and flat-faced pansies;
The tough cascading foxglove is aloof.
Forgotten, a stream placid over gravel
Turns a waterwheel, dousing each paddle’s growth
Of wet-dark moss. Beneath its muted trundle
The water puzzles as if seeking sense;
The wheel turns without end or consequence.
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Petunias and breaking-wave lobelia
Sparkle: the dark-leaved tart geraniums
Are cautious but the party-plate regalia
Of passion flowers trumps all. With a glutton’s smile
Blowsy St John’s Wort bubbles like custard. In town’s-edge roughlands children with low guile
Behead dandelions and storm the clustered
Ice cream flutes of bindweed. Ignored, the breeze
Scuffles the rank bushes like gushing water.
Grasshoppers, dauntless among vetch and furze,
Grind their tissue-and-comb call for a partner.
Beyond are the woods. Tall spruce and dense beech
Flash fresh growth. Beneath their shade-cool awning
Wood wasps dart and sing in the sun’s hot shaft,
Moths start from the path dust and grubs hang, dancing
On threads. Hidden, a train soughs through a culvert.
Such musky disarray! Boles, lichened boughs,
Hang, lean, lie, trellised by ivy, inert
To the gross-feeding fungus. Spider and louse
Forage under dust-heavy ferns; the brown
Dunnock, pattering, will devour them. High
On a birch’s flaky trunk a flame-crown
Woodpecker scatters bark, laughing mournfully:
Summer’s workshop of instinct and sensation
Echoes with breeding, killing and mutation.
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Moistens the meadows; like earthenware the sky
Projects raw heat and soused with dust the tall
Hollyhock totters, though the thistle, sly,
Shrugs defiance, flaunting its purple bonnet.
Blackspot swarms on the rose leaves; lavender
Protests with scent like a sumptuous sonnet,
But among roots slugs gorge juicy provender.
Ruthless, the sky blackens – cats go to ground;
Thunder like granite cracking, lightning stark
As judgement, scourge with rain-hard wind the drowned
Buddleia, gangling in the abandoned park.
Later, squirrels daredevil in the high trees
Seeking berries. Breakneck growth has reached stasis;
Pale, reluctant men are squeamish to seize
The year’s last chance for some anabasis.
Instead, the harvest. Combines clatter in the fields
Engulfing barley and rapeseed. Rabbits
Squat, stupefied by the heat-dust which builds
Over the slaughter, shroud to man’s habits.
After the heat, the evening silence is long;
Jigsaw pieces of pigeon-grey cloud drift
Breathlessly. A nervy spider’s web among
Tight-leaved privets displays a jackdaw’s gift –
A feather. Fireweed strips its seed heads to husk,
Purple in sidings in the humid slow dusk.
Towards its winter wanness. A dawn bar
Of lemon light descends facades and dun
Windows erupt. Mercury dew on car
And hedge embodies the high flat sky where jet
Tracks stipple the cloth-thin blue. A transhumance
Begins, archaic and grim. Howling regret
The swifts have fled. Coal tits feed in a trance.
By afternoon an Indian warmth has built
And sea winds thresh the tamarisk. Inland,Butterflies dither between the rattling quilt
Of sweet pea and violet scabious, japanned.
Fruits firm. Blackberries at the line side glow
Off-limits. The dusted bilberry is shy,
The glossy rosehip brash; glimmers the sloe;
The tree fruit though is hard and green, still dry.
Die-back sets in. Hibiscus loses bulk;
Once more lost pots wink through the whiskery grass;Moisture is lost – the ligamented hulk
Of bramble quivers its limbs under the brass
Harvest moon. Harvest home! Church bells call out
In short-lived homage, but the golden gleamsOf summer turn matt and autumn’s redoubt
Of plenty is mined by shivering dreams
Of starving villeins gleaning ice-hard tillage:
Against winter, men gather wood and knowledge.
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Gaping like fledglings’ mouths, disgorging nuts
Glossy as foals. The sunspot dahlia, cursed
By rust, sags, and the mauve aster abuts
The ground. Apples, pears, blush ripe and are gathered;
Plums are downy like cheeks, though whitepox mould Rots the fallen. Leafage, jaundiced and weathered
Like skin, dangles dolefully, rueing the cold.
Night darkness deepens and sunrise is damp;
Mist like a low tide sluices the coppice.
Birds are silent; and, bodies in a hump,
Folk rush to work, their faces like pumice.
The angry wasp dies. Unmindful, the sheep
In the fields await slaughter. Autumn’s effacement
Looms, and like children feverish in sleep
Folk fidget, resisting the abatement
Of blood and flesh. Post-equinox, the rains
At last begin – a drenching, drumming fallFrom cloud like a taut sheet, engulfing drains,
Stained with the city’s lights like yellow gall.
A gale follows. Mountainous gun-metal cloud
Invests the horizon. Battle-primed wind
Assaults the sopping ash trees, barrels loud
In subways. Later, the assault declined,
Sunlight cracks the siege towers’ plinths and domes,
Searing them gold and white with lacquers, chromes.
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NOVEMBER
The year collapses. Creatures hoard and hide;
The sun’s thin gruel does not sustain; All Souls
Is chorused with phlegm and colds, and man’s pride
Flickers in guiltiness like dying coals.
NOVEMBER
The year collapses. Creatures hoard and hide;
The sun’s thin gruel does not sustain; All Souls
Is chorused with phlegm and colds, and man’s pride
Flickers in guiltiness like dying coals.
Fireworks! Flare and smoke in the foggy dark,
Crump of mines and crackers like tearing cloth;A spent hydrangea gapes in the fumes’ murk,
And starved, a fuchsia droops its lifeless mouth.
Windstruck, the sycamore and pollard lime
Disgorge their leaves, blood-brown and pumpkin-yellow;Crackling in piles or mulched with the streets’ grime
They smother boots and wheels, sticky as tallow.
Stripped tree crowns supplicate like sinners’ hands,
Ignored by the corn-plaster morning moon;Birch catkins like joss stick ash hang in bands:
The fairground starling fizzes its showman’s croon.
Mornings are bromine-dull. Ablution-steam
From bathrooms plumes the air; rime like sugarSprinkles the eaves. Post-noon a drowsy gloom
Blanches the clammy light. At dusk a figure
Homes in a breath-cloud, the frost-melt hardens
And night, plum-black, annihilates the sky:
Rooks before roosting palaver in gardens.
Come dawn and gruff horses loom in the lea,
Herring gulls vortex onto the river bank –
Where death pinpoints the straggler with a snapped shank.
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DECEMBER
The shortest day. Men slumber heavily,
Rising belatedly from their own must;
The brief hours pass in twilit lethargy:
How bitter is the sharp air’s Hades taste.
DECEMBER
The shortest day. Men slumber heavily,
Rising belatedly from their own must;
The brief hours pass in twilit lethargy:
How bitter is the sharp air’s Hades taste.
The flint church broods among its dead, their stones
Slewed beneath burdensome ivy; wind wreathesThe graveyard, polishing to corpse-grey tones
The folded frosty grass and ice-thin leaves.
A stark oak with its heart’s-vein branches bears
A derelict nest like a wart; below,The densely-armoured holly, dour, outstares
The swart yew at whose trunk no plant will grow.
Among the graves a barrel-chested robin
Chides the rummaging blackbirds. At sundownMagpies in the frost-hung willow come mobbing –
Their clatter stilled by mist fading to fawn.
A yelping bark: a watchful fox appears,
Scabby-brown and thin. A house-fed tabbySneaks to safety. A man with cold-pinched ears
Considers the pocked stone of a tomb, webby
With rotted bindweed. Ah, the dead will shiver
Tonight! The sun, apricot-small, resilesBeneath roofs. Ice-film drifts in the river.
What fraught silence, what darkness; bead-hard frost fills
Hollows. In such nullity, how will birth
Force passage through the stiff, refusing earth?
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JANUARY
Engulfs the sky, inflaming the flat cloud
And searing pink the townscape below; lozenged
Glass flares and freezes, intincted with blood.
Shorn of growth’s clutter, a wisteria prinks
Its picked bones; the tall poplar swayinglyDisdains the bundled shoppers whom cold cranks
Into shop door stand-offs, shrill and unseemly.
And then the snow. From a steel sky it flogs
Faces and legs, creaks underfoot and lards
The common. Gulls, edgy at snow-mad dogs,
Settle, beaten down by its stinging shards.
The iron-bound lake is frozen. White-nosed coot
Ballet-strut its grey slabs, planting arrow-printsIn slush. Snow waves, chivvied by the wind’s shout,
Lap the ice, where thrown sticks protrude, black as flints.
Determined, children build snowmen, cupping
The featherdown to ice, though perished fingersProduce screams at sunset. The air, dipping
To dark, is mauve with snow. A coot cry lingers.
Despite all, the yellow jasmine has flowered,
Its petals soggy as tissue. Bulbs erectTheir spatulas. The fragile snowdrop, bowered
In ice, droops its molars. Shabby man, shipwrecked
In darkness, racked by bronchitis or worse,
Janus-like twists in the turn of the year’s course.
FEBRUARY
A niggard thaw fouls pavements; filthy melt
Like a scraped canvas. Spattered frost like felt
Tops hedge and soil, blighting with a thrawn hand
The muted froth of heathers. Scarlet berries
Decay in the holly though the cherry treePowders its crown with hesitant fancies
Of blossom. Taut daffodil wands make free
With the breeze, dipping their yolk-heads broodily
Over the beanshoot-skinny crocuses.
The tide is slack. Clouds eddy wearily,
Blotting the sun – a disc which focuses
No light nor heat. Men like woodlice in litter
Grudgingly stir, their torpid warmth combustedBy the seasons’ peristalsis. But the bitter
Monochrome wind discourages bombastic
Gesture: better to re-curl in shavings
Like a breathing nodule than be wokenBy an incautious morning mob of starlings –
Their wings cracking like a black cloth shaken.
Dead water: sopping sands glitter; suede shingle
Darkens beneath indigo shadow; the wavesLift careless heads like seals. But that wrangle
Of waters is unstable; soon that which laves
Will pound, driving up the foreshore to thrash
The sea wall and startle all drowsing flesh.
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© March 2012 - July 2013