reading john Clare

I am reading about madness and poetry – so unsurprisingly, I’m reading John Clare

John Clare

The miracle is

Not that you wrote poetry

Although

That is miraculous enough

The miracle is

That you learnt to read at all

And having got your letters

You held onto them

Hard

Not content with just the bible

The almanac

And maybe

The peddler’s lurid tale of hangings far way

Audacious enough to believe that

The farm hand from the midlands

Could shape with hands

That bear the marks of manual labour

When getting up at first light meant just that

When men and horses and carts

Moved and shaped the landscape

You

Moved and shaped your poems

And when

Wheels slipped in mud

And cold and wet and grey

Seeped into your bones

Your mind was elsewhere

While your body did the work

You moved and shaped the landscape of language

And I find I’m thinking of you

As I crawl on my hands and knees

Under a kitchen table

Where the crumbs of three

Or four days breakfasts lie

Because

The cleaner’s coming on Tuesday

And my hands bear the marks of years of manual labour too

Fingers twisting in new shapes

Arthritic architecture

Broken nails

Fingerprints burnt off by bleach

But

Like you

While my body bends in the routine of repetition

My mind is free

Daring enough to hold onto language

While my landscape of skirting boards

And grimy bathrooms

And kitchen sinks

Still blocked with two day old porridge

Isn’t a lovely as yours

John Clare

But

Like you

I am holding on

Holding onto language

Holding onto beauty

Holding onto my belief

In self.