John Clare

Spondee; name –
damp earth and distance. This
is what it’s like to leave – first
the dirt, robin perched
on the handle of the spade; Mary, up-
ending a bucket for him to sit
while she hisses the milk into a pail,
ear pressed to a flank, lap,
the fern owl’s nest. Enclosure, 1810 –
the first act, the moors
all cut like quilt nap. Blue
thread of pain. – Why does anyone
think they can step back? (me,
when I close my eyes I
can see the hill beyond
the larch, cows like specks – )
Homesick? Blue flax, birds’ eggs,
he writes: the moor, “its only
bondage the circling sky.” The blackbird
In the coppice churrs, “we have no name for
burst of spring.” Doctor Allen
feels the perfect dome, ellipse –
ellipsis – of his skull; phrenology at Fairmead
house for the Insane; vicissitudes of weather
on
the subject’s mind. The Flitting, “summer
like a stranger comes…I envy birds,”
sweeping clear sky. John Clare,
“my life hath been one love,” escapes:
wet ditches, Mary, “my life
hath been one chain of contradictions,”
in search of Mary – dead now
three years, eating grass.
And this: when he dies the villagers lift
the lid of the coffin, see if it’s
he, keep mid-night vigil; keep
at bay a London surgeon wanting
to slice the top of his skull, to study
the tempest settling.