David Morley

El aire la vela, vela.
El aire la está velando.
after Lorca
A pettelengra boy whacks petalos on his anvil.
The moon slides into his smithy, bright as a borì.
The boy can not stop himself staring. The moon
releases her arms in flames of flamenco,
her sweet dress slipping from one shoulder.
‘Nash nash, choon, nash nash, choon, choon.
If the Rom catches you he will splice your zi
He will smelt your soul for miriklè and vongustrì.'
The moon smiles, ‘Chavvo, let me kur my kellipen.
By the cherris the gyppos come, they will find you
poggadi on the anvil with your biddi yokkers lelled'.
‘Nash nash, choon, nash nash, choon, choon
Run for it, moon, run away, moon, fair moon.
I can hear the hooves of my horse masters hammering.'

‘Chavvo, muk me be. Don't pirro upon my pawni
ringi so rinkana'. The drumskin of the plains thrums
with hoof-strokes. The boy backs across the smithy.
Horse masters hove through the night-tree
a forest in slow motion, bronze and dream.
Bronze and dream are the Roma their eyes sky-high,
their gaze lances through walls of world and smithy.
But the moon dances her prey to the snare of a mirror.
She hauls the pettelengra o kolè dyoonaste to the pliashka.
The gypsies ride at her trailing veils, her mokkadi doovàki.
The wind whips by, wraps the moon in her purlènta.
It wraps that bride, the moon, the moon, barval, bevvali!
...

John Clare weaves English words into a nest
and in the cup he stipples rhyme, like mud,
to clutch the shape of something he can hold
but not yet hear; and in the hollow of his hearing,
he feathers a space with a down of verbs
and nouns heads-up. There. Clare lays it down
and nestles over its forming sound: taps and lilts,
the steady knocking of the nib on his hand until
it hatches softly beneath him. And when he peers
below his palm, he spies its eyes, hears its peeps,
but does not know what to think. He strokes
its tottering yolk-wet crown; feels a nip against
his thumb, buds of muscle springy at the wing, and all
the hungers of the world to come for this small singing.
...

When yeck's tardrad yeck's beti ten oprey,
kair'd yeck's beti yag anglo the wuddur,
ta nash'd yeck's kekauvi by the kekauviskey saster.
Wisdom leans against an ash tree, shouldering his violin,
slipping the bow to stroke the strings that stay silent
at distance. All John Clare hears is a heron's cranking
and the frozen bog creaking beneath his tread
until that ash tree bows with fieldfares and redwings
and the birds' tunes rise up and twine with Wisdom's.
The men gossip an hour and John Clare writes down
the tune ‘Highland Mary' and the gypsy's given names.
Once Clare is gone the birds refasten to the ash-crown.
Wisdom hacks and stamps the heather beneath his tent,
claps a blanket on springy furze to serve as mattress
and hooks a nodding kettle to the kettle-iron.
He hangs his head, listens, and shoulders the violin.
By practice and by pricking to mind he will master this.
...

You must jib by your jibben: and if a base
se tukey you must chiv lis tuley.
The Blue Bell Inn on Woodgate in the small hours after Time.
‘I was thinking', slurs John Clare, ‘now I can turn a poem
I might turn to an even thornier art'. ‘Like hedge-laying
you mean?' winks Wisdom, ‘There is more coin in snedding
than blotting'. ‘My friend, there are men of merit and name
who pleach whole hedges of words. They call it criticism.
What I want' - Clare pounds the deal table - ‘is more scale.'
Mishearing, the landlord stumps across with a brimming jug.
‘I just mean', stammers John, ‘to be taken to heart by those men.
I have been a steeple-climber all my life. Such is my poor pen'.
John glares into his ale. Wisdom flickers a finger toward the ceiling.
He blows a slow column of smoke up. Everybody in the pub
stares and sees what the gypsy has made. ‘There is the steeple.
This' - Wisdom circles his arm - ‘this is the church and the people'.
...

far hid from the world's eye:
I fain would have some friend to wander nigh
John Clare
My house hoves nowhere, hauled by invisible horses.
Shades shift around me, warming their hands at my hearth.
It has rained speech-marks down the windows' pages,
gathering a broken language in pools on their ledges
before letting it slither into the hollows of the earth.
My child stares out of windows on a pouring planet.
To him perhaps it is raining everywhere and forever.
I told myself this once. It is why I do not forget it;
although forty years have passed yet I am no older.
When Gypsy people speak aloud to one another
across greenway and hollow-way they say sister and brother.
When mother or father speak aloud to their children
they say our own daughter and they say our own son.
I call out to my child, and he is everywhere, and she is everyone.
...