{"id":478,"date":"2011-12-28T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=478"},"modified":"2011-12-28T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-28T12:00:00","slug":"the-fourth-day-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-fourth-day-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fourth Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forecast for 28 December, 2011 <\/span>

This is it: even at noon the fields <\/span>
can raise a crop of furrow shadow.<\/span>
Hedges are flailed pension plans for fieldfares,<\/span>
and rooks spell out in shifting pictograms<\/span>
what the ivy knows, but isn't telling:<\/span>
that trees are doomed public sector workers,<\/span>
and Britain's growth depends on the horizon.<\/span>

While house martins put flight capital<\/span>
into sunny tax havens, and swifts scarper<\/span>
as the schools go back, harlequin ladybirds <\/span>
over-winter in your curtains, parakeets<\/span>
are making a go of it, and another egret <\/span>
arrives at Southampton, pockets empty, <\/span>
willing to do a gull's work if gulls won't.<\/span>

An Atlantic depression jostles with a blocking<\/span>
continental anticyclone. Our sky will try to host <\/span>
both systems, while the backdoor Gulf Stream <\/span>
delivers cowrie shells like drowned slaves' teeth<\/span>
and three degrees of lost imperial heat. <\/span>
Hunched in their ivy tower the wide-boy rooks<\/span>
reckon it means more weather either way.      <\/span>



*Nick MacKinnon<\/a> <\/span>teaches Maths and English. His puzzles appear in the Sunday Times, he's been second in the Bridport and Edwin Morgan, and his audiobook <\/span>Storytelling <\/span>read by Stephen Campbell Moore and Juliet Stevenson comes out in 2012.<\/span>




Seasoned Reasons<\/span>
 <\/span>
because Bethlehem vanished in a blizzard<\/span>
of correction fluid, and shoots grown-on<\/span>
from palms crossed with shekels flowered<\/span>
 <\/span>
because what hammers society into iron<\/span>
was not, and will never be, pederasty — still<\/span>
quite the hook to hang a captive audience on —<\/span>
 <\/span>
because communities burst their rivers<\/span>
Israel-wide, far beyond, and in his bed,<\/span>
every receiver grew to meet his giver<\/span>
 <\/span>
because astrologers, magicians, qualify<\/span>
as that day's queers, aroused as they are<\/span>
by the deviant star's clean Roman coin<\/span>
 <\/span>
because the contemporary stage holds<\/span>
that a roof can bend in the centre like a tent,<\/span>
not lie flat like a precise law's banknote<\/span>
 <\/span>
because the whole Leviticus Code rests<\/span>
on this: cattle lying prostrate in a stable,<\/span>
beside the mild current of the Christ-child<\/span>
 

<\/span> <\/span>
*Mark Burnhope<\/span><\/a>'s poems and reviews have appeared in print and online publications including Magma, Horizon Review, Nth Position, Stride<\/span> and The Best British Poetry<\/span> 2011 (Salt). His debut pamphlet, <\/span>The Snowboy<\/span> is available from Salt Publishing.<\/span>




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Forecast for 28 December, 2011 This is it: even at noon the fields can raise a crop of furrow shadow.Hedges are flailed pension plans for fieldfares,and rooks spell out in shifting pictogramswhat the ivy knows, but isn't telling:that trees are doomed public sector workers,and Britain's growth depends on the horizon.While house martins put flight capitalinto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}