(3) Holy Month
Peter Philpott
look! another time to start
this year has nothing but, so
look at what it gives us
summer again(all brief)
and a chance to dig in
harvesting slow to make
due sacrifice to all the powers
manifold & circumambient
last brightness in the air
it starts with us all together
you can say we begin with nothing
except what the world now gives us
insects again & all small life
thronging where we dig
harvesting in the middle of decay
preparing what is due to live
many folded around us
lost in the brightness of the air
Let’s just hold it together
begin again with nothing
open to what the world gives
life innumerable & delicate
bursting out where we dig
harvest triumphing over decay
preparing some brief escape
our lives are folded in this world
lost within its final brief air
His as later involved Gaul, migrants own new are the hunger.
what does need?
ascending to gods
I am fragile
– don’t touch
tossed up poet
in the world of her heart
capacity for delusion
only now the
pity of this world
3a Day of the Early Coffee at Café W
what’s open here? Oh
most things unwritten in our diaries
all the due occasions
aren’t they full of sun today?
It might change, yes one
day but it always starts off like this
irregular but you just get used
it carries on
– there is no regard
what we can’t do – oh!
everything unwritten to smudge at once
the occasion may be of anger
– no – now you’ve lost us our sun
things might change, no better
every day starts off like this
don’t you just feel used
there are no options on
no regards to anyone
can we hold it? can we?
everything can begin again
no anger at what the world gives
innumerable and lost – yes
things burst out & change
every day some triumph against decay
don’t prepare any escape you feel
all options folded in
regards to all the airy brightness
3b The Anniversary of the Destruction of the World Trade Center: A Reading
The secret is water. There isn’t any here. Our ration of full-stops, or periods, is also limited, and we have only a single burning torch for light. The rocks are real, ragged, rascally, reprehensible in their refusal to engage with us, except as absolute blind, dark other, sharp and without sentiment. Our feet crunch over so many priceless treasures – even Athelfrith in all his glory saw nothing like this. I doubt too he had the dubious pleasure of walking across his own hoard at night, occasionally lurching into a gleaming fragment of skeleton, long picked clean by whatever scavengers are allowed to survive in such a place. The steps down into this sump of corroded gold and silver will not be the way out. Something even more dark and terrible has been prepared for us. Fine ash, too, drifts across the air, dull air, absolutely lifeless, agitated only feebly by the spastic fluttering of the bats’ wings and the inaudible racket of their sound world. At one level, the whole sensory continuum we are engaged within loses resolution, breaks down into hard dark abusive hatchments. Nothing fluid.
3c To Commemorate the List of 10 Best Places for a Girl to Grow up in
We must thank the Blessed St Eadgyth of Stortford, of whom nothing is known, especially not around here. We are all impressed by the news – we had fled the place generations ago in disgust: that nest of self-deluded Brexiters and minor cadres in the City Guilds of Usurers and Thimbleriggers. How virtue shines in unexpected corners! Does the blessing exceed the frequent cursings we must also endure? Do the memory and hope of better things overrule the constant risks of blight, plague and dragon breath? Maybe let Eadgyth tell us in her long silence. Her perpetual withdrawal and self loss, despite all these things – who else can we thank? Don’t ask the priests, with all their bloody tales of sacrifice. Plan for your locality, my friends. Build up utopias. All stories will come true one day.
3d The Day After the Grandchildren Return to Their Parents
some harvests are a blessing
which is why this day is holy
don’t count the syllables or stalks
bring in every word that’s ripe
you have survived the white plague
and this may be the month
that things hope together
if we have enough here for winter
we last out the dark
it starts us all together
to begin with what we can gather
from all the world gives us
the myriad forms of life
let us join its throng
haunt & decay cover this world
from which come all life
we must fold up within it
found in its brightness now
maybe we can hold it
to let it all begin again
nourishing what the world gives us
lost within its multiplicity of course
accepting the perpetual change
each day a new triumph
nothing to escape but to feed
the options folded around us
holy and alive as bright air
3e The Day Amazon Wrongly Charged Us
The people we need are those strenuous warriors, Unwin & Wade. When we’re faced with problems this bad: think! Then adopt a constraint:
all these migrants from Gaul
what do they need?
how fragile really are they?
don’t touch their parcels!
tossed off their wagons
like a woman discarding her lovers
we don’t know what is delusion
only now something comes
starting here with pity
is that constraint enough? My god, we need those hairy arsed bastards now, not prayers to non existent saints.
Uh-oh – you don’t know do you?
What? It’s simple – use only the best.
No one knows anything about them either – oh, yes, some late stuff about a boat – dubious as a Mercian royal nunnery. The whole point is that everything about here has dropped off – just think signifiers with no other side to them. Names that mean nothing. Harvested fields too late even for the gleaner.
Peter Philpott’s most recent books are Ianthe Poems (Shearsman, 2015) and Wound Scar Memories (Great Works Editions, 2017). He is founding editor of the websites British Innovative Poetry and Great Works.
