from COLIN CLOUT IN THE KNOWLEDGE QUARTER:
A SHEPHERD’S CALENDAR
Dan Eltringham
I fucking love you months
— Jeff Hilson, In the Assarts
So having ended, he from the ground did rise,
And after him uprose eke all the rest:
All loth to part, but that the glooming skies
Warnd them to draw their bleating flocks to rest.
— Edmund Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe
I
Where mutability is the prime
& principle of flux where re-
-construction is at work change
is always loose & constant: temp-
-orary as blossom. When not in
the knowledge quarter I am not
on the steps of Regent’s Canal. So
much alteration going on revolves
faster than the year flinging up lonely
interior walls dreaming of the shelter
of their own roofs and thermal cladding
all before the first bud of untimely spring.
II
Sprung from unhomely weeds
the insulated exo-membranes
of the living machines add clout
to my case for one day living in one.
Under-floor heating is just the best way
to spend your time magma welling
up from the deep core & toasting your
toes. When not in the knowledge quarter
nor am I in Granary Square but I don’t
mind much in high winds & driving
rains nor thought of such repose when
it’s hard enough just to turn the bars.
III
When the weather turns press hard down
on the knowledge quarter & it splits lay-
-ered cupronickel parts of the Johnson
sandwich. Why not allow us to manage
your vacancy? As if in answer Shelley’s sky-
-lark shot into my brain and out mine ear,
a server serving whom? Hover a mouse
over cursory zones of encouragement
plucked from the reduced shrub margin
by a passing hawk nearly zeroed in
on its object: a lethal agent hunched furtively
like someone at an ATM over precious digits.
IV
Money as psychologically experienced
hard round & finite in the pocket cannot ad-
-mit of distended growth from a single
seed as rates soar & dive, a fish-fixed
gannet. Or scurries away with the most
generic of available verbs. Or about to stoop
from the middle air with closing pinions
it gives up & grows suddenly weary, it peels
away like Zapata turning back from the capital
though sure of victory, called south by the planting
season. Mayday. Corn over history. And who’s
to say at the end of the day they chose wrong?
V
Election being anyway the wrong frame
for such observance. Work on defining
its borders and you miss the picture
bigger than any given window. As Merino
profits sent Columbus to Mexico. You can
hear the italics rustle through the leaves
here careering wildly down the track across
the frame into Career Prospect View;
but a view carries less weight than a visit,
or a visit is an accumulation of views,
a stack of picture-postcard prospects piled
up in a forgotten corner of the search field.
VI
On Yucatan earth I feel the axis tilt –
the longest daystar rises through the
stone arch. Back in the quarter I chuck
it over my shoulder where it shatters
asphalt crystalline shards surefire
puncture of fondest hopes. New sward
opens tree-lined canvas walks, banners
wave in summer breeze. Yellow benches
sprout, all quickens into something I can
believe as pressure dives to storm-gauge.
Remember then the three ways to be justified:
left, centre & right; works, faith & election.
VII
Everyone’s running it fine to those margins
now, emergency faring at tether’s end. Bare
& boring August save us your modesties
& hie ye to the fields & bring in the corn,
weedy month. But don’t fret: soon
the historic Midland goods yard will
be sensitively transformed into a food
barn serving ‘street’ food, ‘angry’ fries, meats
‘pulled’ from an irate pig. A barn for stock
& husbandry, feral carry-on/carry-out harvest
of once-burnished metal. Only forebear that cant
until you know what the surplus is and where it is.
VIII
Sure that’s eating but damn I just love
using things up for example butter milk
eggs and non-dairies too the best bit
is throwing away the packaging, an ecstasy
cycle of just the right amount. But look
you don’t always need to be putting stuff in,
topping it up: an inadequate instrument it
keeps going on till it doesn’t two clocks in time
ticking. Assume it’s functioning fine nor fear
of minor ills, feel ordinary pride in prosaic
legislation, get half-drunk just for the ride home,
break the spell & make the choice: time or money?
IX
Willet plumped for saving both to finish
off his round of golf basking still in daylight
the year dislocated as it ever was Diminishing
the Cost of Light, rationed stuff, solar disc antient
instrument of time & times, the only real science.
Good for tourism retail & sport, Daylight
Slaving Time lets workers photosynthesise
in leisure hours; in rural Chiapas little heed
is paid to Standard Central Gulf Time: the calendar
round nestles in the Long Count a squirrel’s dray
in the bole of an ancient oak burrowed out by
any number of minor borers, branches barely sere.
Dan Eltringham is writing an AHRC-supported PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London, on poetry and the commons. His poetry and translations have appeared in Blackbox Manifold, The Goose, The Clearing, Intercapillary Space, Alba Londres 6: Contemporary Mexican Poetry and Scabs are Rats Zine 4, as well as in two chapbooks, Mystics and Ithaca. He has published critical work on R. F. Langley and Sean Bonney, with work forthcoming on Peter Riley and Peter Larkin. He is currently putting together his first full-length poetry collection and co-edits Girasol Press, a (very) small letterpress that publishes experimental translations between English and Spanish.
