Issue 30: James Coghill

Speedwells

But we have nothing, not even that which we ought to seek

— Amma Syncletica

i

speedwells

(come&gone)

in swift

rosary, shuttle

the blip (!)

blue lambent, & blaze

in desert

ii (spring)

only

where rabbits splay

minutest of clearings.

the leaves,

small but perfectly /

bloomed eyelets, fixed

in penitent

rage /

lodged a shrunk,

as if to protest life itself:

Amma Pelagia.

iii (fingered)

slung in

where the sand&turf /

wherethe

flight from everything leads

to an edgeland

georgic.

it is

the council estate

that harbours your

rare&rare /

drooped though upright,

faintly fuzzedthoughgrim

stem, the blooms

coming blue

before the blet, a

gasp &

(nod, foliate)

askesis

in chlorophyll,

inked.

iv (breckland)

wearing hair,

her own hairwith

Zossima

gawping, summer leans

on the brand, twists

a charr mysticism in / brute

withextremesof /

just look where love

gets you: a small preserve,

a pat of blue,

endless wimples

v

notbeinga

paciens, purpose. slow over-

turn, or death

in the superheated

soil

of all this stuff

i do not want, or need. that 

it is easier for / i

witness

a passing through

here: the

issue&

august return of /

through the veil

St. Veronica

walks…

Slimy Waxcap

(Gliophorus irrigatus)

dabbled

fingers in

                                                viscid)

from the

deep moss

              ………………

how the throttled seasons /

& the mycelia  quickens:

                                                    it is late isn’t it?

              ………………

the tarn of a cap

the tipped load

                                              vital grease)

rubbed

between thumb

& forefinger /       

                              sublimates)

or confrere

with my own

spiced sweats

& lipids–

                 ………………

wide pool,

with the sequoia

the oak & the lime

in it. & me

                              (metaphysically

obtuse–

sprawlingly

             ………………

the oily shades

the blenched cap spilling

a peck of spores

            ………………

mushrump

excrement of the earth

in this nook

of a nation: always

suspect

            ………………

i jot down /

i put it to a name

without thinking         

the generative

part

                                basidium)            

            ………………

for soon a frost will

scald them clean

            ………………

dips back

beneath the soil then,

strange &

unguent creature

of pigment though

                                     (touch

sticks to skin

& seeps 

Clanvowe

           after the life and works of Sir John Clanvowe c.1341 – c.1391

i

                                           comes in from

                              (slewed — belligerent)

                    knight for   king-kitten,   young Richard

             having charged in at ‘100 years, Harry,’

                                           to a made-man, peace-bleak &

                                  busily: 

                                                    [ffor we been euery day

                                                    goyng ful faste towardis another place

                                                    and we wyten neuere

                                                    how soone we shuln out of this world]

                                    walking 

           the nargh wey   by dint of  

                    the pared-blink, the Jhesu althergretteste

                                              lollard & diplomat when   risking much

                                 on   espying, pilgrimage

                                           (conjectures, thus)—

                                                [‘I love you,

                                                     Nevill’] 

ii (a tomb interval)

                                      — process, down to —

                              twin tomb, Clanvowe + Nevill

                                     of whitish, slightly grey ribboned

                    Proconnesian marble   thought to   by

                                an inexperienced

                                                          (rush-job?) sculptor  

                                — in the northern style —

                      where (‘on pilgrimage to Constantinople’)

                 C. succumbed to the plague 

                          and N. who,

                       was so disconsolate that he took no food

                                 and died two days later,

                                           were put to rest

                            — the tomb slab rare in that —

                           double epitaph   two helms leaning in

                                                                                             as if to 

                              the coats of arms impaled as a single

                        was and remains a way of marshalling

                        the arms of a husband and wife

                                  — on a single shield1 —

____________________________________________________________

1  =  gules a saltire argent,

    with a fleur de lys right with a

    paly of six or and azure, on a fess gules

    three mullets [?] pierced of the field…

iii

                                           Maye when

                               (ocy   ocy)

                      a choral  

                          birds birds birds   coaxes out our

                              Clanvowe — protagonist &

                unlikely saviour of   not much in particular  

                                                                          [I speke this of felynge trewely,

                                                                          For al thogh I be olde and vnlusty,

                                                                          Yet haue I felt of that sekenes in… ]

                                                          save when he

                             swoons a dream of   (Nightingale vs. Cuckoo)

                                                                                       (fight of the)      

                till the forensic jarrs &

                                            flashpoint: ran and gatte a stone

                          & lobbed it at the latter

                                 who swears to be avenged

                                                    on the both of them or —

                                           explicit liber

                                                               cupidinis