Spent some time back in England today, in some woods in Northamptonshire, transported there via John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar. Read October to celebrate the arrival of the month with much delight. The Peasant Poet is a master of particularities and his list of what he observes in the poets solitary way as the month begins brings a vanished world wonderfully to bustling life.
I have to hold myself back from quoting the whole thing, and will settle for six lines centred on falling acorns:
Crows from the oak trees qawking as they spring / Dashing the acorns down wi beating wing / Waking the woodlands sleep in noises low / Pattring on crimpt brakes withering brown below / While from their hollow nest the squirrels pop / Adown the tree to pick them as they drop
What music, eh? Yet the poem met with little success in Clare's lifetime in terms of sales. Fortunately for us it lives in eternity.
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