{"id":947,"date":"2011-01-01T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=947"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","slug":"the-eighth-day-of-chrismas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-eighth-day-of-chrismas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eighth Day of Chrismas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Resolution<\/span><\/p>\n

Hungover in the cow-fresh air,
they leave their after-party friends
to stuffing frosty cars with leftovers
and sleeping children. She wishes
that they had a dog, or tartan travel rugs.
 
The pub is mulled and mistletoed,
ashine with polished warming pans and holly.
The Sheffield Pipe Band skirls into the bar and out,
unlikely in their kilts. The landlord smiles at her.
The band leader, the men in bright new scarves,
the other fireside lovers: everyone is smiling.
She removes, too late, the reindeer hat. <\/p>\n

He heaves her uphill to the torpid castle:
kisses her against the wishbone walls,
scowls at glockenspiels and trumpets
blarting up through crow-filled trees.
They march down singing Wenceslas.
This is going to be a fruitful year,
she thinks. Or better than the last.<\/p>\n

Jo Bell<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/font>

New Year Canticles<\/span>

1.<\/span>
The new government is the old government,<\/span>
The new year is the old year in new shoes,<\/span>
The new testament is the old one reversed,<\/span>
The new man is the old man newly cursed.<\/span>

The new poor are the old poor plus a few.<\/span>
The new itinerant is the old bum.<\/span>
The new lie is the old lie, and then some.<\/span>
The new Titanic steams on through old scum.<\/span>

2.<\/span>
When they blew away the dust they found<\/span>
a brand new darkness underneath.<\/span>
It surprised them. They prodded it with sticks.<\/span>
It didn\u2019t move for ages, then it stirred.<\/span>
It wanted naming but they couldn\u2019t find the word<\/span>

3.<\/span>
You think of your children in the early light<\/span>
of the new era. You think of birds in flight.<\/span>
You think of a cup in the kitchen in the broad<\/span>
sunlight of mid November, of the faint noise of the road.<\/span>

You think of the rhetoric of time<\/span>
as a faintly bombastic ticking. You think of buds<\/span>
ticking away in the branch under the rime.<\/span>
The emblematic delicacy of soap suds.<\/span>

4.<\/span>
And the notion of an uninterrupted passage<\/span>
towards happiness, the joy of the unkissed moment<\/span>
waiting to fly past you, reassuringly off-message,<\/span>
like a ludicrous, airborne, angelic monument,<\/span>

Cupid on a bender, a sweet urgent gust<\/span>
of well-being. Love among the just.<\/span>


George Szirtes<\/span>




*Jo Bell<\/span><\/a> works across the UK on a huge range of poetry projects, including National Poetry Day and Ledbury Poetry Festival. She has no sense of humour at all so won't be adding a witty comment about her hobbies.<\/span>

*George Szirtes<\/span><\/a>: Intended scientist, drawn into bad company of poetry and art, leapt into translation. Published shelffuls of books, won some glittering prizes. Bits of radio and telly but only in an obscure kind of way. Talks a lot.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Resolution Hungover in the cow-fresh air, they leave their after-party friends to stuffing frosty cars with leftovers and sleeping children. She wishesthat they had a dog, or tartan travel rugs. The pub is mulled and mistletoed,ashine with polished warming pans and holly.The Sheffield Pipe Band skirls into the bar and out, unlikely in their kilts. The […]<\/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":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-twelve-days-of-christmas-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","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=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23917,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/23917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}