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- Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
The Field in Winter, the third collection of poetry by David Clarke, winner of the Michael Marks Award, elegantly reflects on memory, time, and the very particular landscape of loss, in a calendar of poems, a 'charm of words' that track and loop through seasons of nature and living. The relationship between the environment, the human body and the self takes centre stage here in poetry that is concerned with being in the world - senses alive to the detail of things, the trunk of a linden tree , the shock of cold water, the frenzy of bees and blossom. But these remarkable poems also write towards the intangible in the late summer's dusk – an empty cage, a bird flown; history's slow grind and echo. Clarke's elegies reach out to touch what passes us fleetingly in a moment of time – 'before the tongue can catch them' – held for that second, precious, in his poised and finely weighted poetry.
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The Field in Winter
The Field in Winter
David Clarke
ISBN: 978-1-913437-76-3
eISBN: 978-1-913437-77-0
Copyright © David Clarke, 2023.
Cover artwork: ‘Winter Evening’ by John Northcote Nash (1893-1977) © Worthing Museum / © Estate of John Northcote Nash. All rights reserved 2023 / Bridgeman Images.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
David Clarke has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
First published September 2023 by:
Nine Arches Press
Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,
Great Central Way, Rugby.
CV21 3XH
United Kingdom
www.ninearchespress.com
Printed on recycled paper in the United Kingdom by Imprint Digital.
Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
In memory of my father,
John Frederick Clarke
(1944 - 2021)
Contents
Reciting a Poem by Czesław Miłosz at Krasnogruda
After the Plum Harvest
“Sweetie”
First Time Swimming in the Lake at Krasnogruda
A Stork at Krasnogruda
The Path from Krasnogruda to Ogrodniki
A Spider in My Kitchen
Flies
Before Storm Ellen Arrives
Before Storm Ellen Leaves
Rabbit
Starlings at Royal Well
Fen Lane
Fog in Byron Road
Clais Fhearnaig
November
Fog at Auborn
Picking Sloes
The Field in Winter
A Spider’s Web on Exmoor
Old Dalby
Liniment
The Word Box
Anniversary
February
The Severn by Sedbury
After Impact
The Field in Spring
Starlings in the Garden
Cherry Blossom
Coult Avenue
Before the Plum Harvest
Sunken Lane
The Bees
The Fall
Crow
Advice for Those Who Are Not Yet Fifty Years Old
Accident
Mahonia Blossom
Urban Fox
Toad Lesson
Wake
The Path from Ogrodniki to Krasnogruda
Second Time Swimming in the Lake at Krasnogruda
Another Stork at Krasnogruda
The day the soldiers come
Marginal
In Wartime
Glen Quoich
The Severn by Waldings Pill
Incident on Coldstream Terrace
In the Street of Late Evening
Song
The End of Summer
Acknowledgements and Thanks
About the author and this book
Reciting a Poem by Czesław Miłosz at Krasnogruda
for Krzysztof Czyżewski
The first thing I want to tell you about
is the trunk of this linden tree –
the surprise of its having taken up
a whole day’s heat from the earth
through the wick of its cracked skin.
Then, at my feet, there are ants
in a web of leaves, twigs and dust,
busy in their unknowable world.
The villagers line up to speak
the poet’s words, which I do not
understand fully in any language.
I’ve chosen one of his last, taking it
as confession of doubt that drove him.
The villagers listen politely as I stumble
over the poem’s uneven threshold –
If I could at last tell you what is in me.
These words turn for a moment in my mind
before the tongue can catch them, briefly,
on their flight through birch and thicket,
to ignite the lake’s dark eye.
After the Plum Harvest
August has turned blue to black.
Bulbs of syrupy liquor droop,
pendulous on brittle staves.
Welts in flesh that will not scar –
they open, glisten to the wasps
who tumble, twitchy-limbed
to lap at ooze. Now amber tears
run dry and make a tacky gum.
The sun is low.
It silhouettes drab sacks of skin
that wither in the canopy.
Is summer still inside?
They drop through green
and mulch the earth with boozy rot.
“Sweetie”
The children carry a cage beneath the trees,
