A Kalamantiano Dance
"Well, Gubbe is slang for old man. But the real meaning is small lump or clump. So, it is lump of the soil."
Elias Johnsson
Elias Johnsson
The strawberry season is short,
the Swedish for strawberry is jordgubbe
literally – old man/lump of the soil?
The season just got shorter.
Proto-Indo-European was first spoken
somewhere west of the Urals, we know this
because of bees and the word bee,
absent east of the Urals.
Conjectured as a journey
from a first home, via the archaeology of language,
we travelled westward, fed well on strawberries,
the borders were porous in counterpoint.
A near horizon blazed at night
shadow clouds tore over our lands,
see Renfrew’s diagrams of system collapse
a crisis of retreat from peripheral zones.
Such regions were ripe for genocide
yo-yo economics, those familiar raids,
this is a fact, statistically verifiable,
a season beyond understanding.
*
She said it looked like a length of black rubber hose,
the black whip snake across the garden path
slipped over the low wall into the beetroot patch
– can cause localised swelling, pain, seek medical help.
Leo is playing his bouzouki and singing again,
Leo is in good voice, his fingers intricate in flight,
amplified from the square of Kato Hora Milia
articulating the rising terraces of green to the sky.
Come, swoop down snake eagle
from your thermals scanning,
Circaetus, we have something for you
under the dancing leaves of that beetroot patch.
*
To answer your questions, this is what happened
and this is how it was written;
out of dark tunnels, a Kalamantiano dance,
children singing, the great literal.
That Spring we drove out of tunnels below Arkadia,
out of darkness saw Artemis grinning, the consort of dogs,
saw at every boundary the transition of common light.
The contours of the valleys shaping sound
the density of pine and plane trees breathing
the sun raising fire over Mount Taleton before Ilias.
That Spring Artemis sent all the big poets and little poets
hysterical down the mountain to the workshop of the sea
in search of the first songs still forming in the sealanes of trade.
We saw the falling down dance and the monodiplos,
counterclockwise ten steps forward, two steps back,
a 7:8 signature, step step in the agora to recover time.
The children sang late into the night
and we set out again on the tracts of the great literal,
the whole village melismatic, the going out and return.
the Swedish for strawberry is jordgubbe
literally – old man/lump of the soil?
The season just got shorter.
Proto-Indo-European was first spoken
somewhere west of the Urals, we know this
because of bees and the word bee,
absent east of the Urals.
Conjectured as a journey
from a first home, via the archaeology of language,
we travelled westward, fed well on strawberries,
the borders were porous in counterpoint.
A near horizon blazed at night
shadow clouds tore over our lands,
see Renfrew’s diagrams of system collapse
a crisis of retreat from peripheral zones.
Such regions were ripe for genocide
yo-yo economics, those familiar raids,
this is a fact, statistically verifiable,
a season beyond understanding.
*
She said it looked like a length of black rubber hose,
the black whip snake across the garden path
slipped over the low wall into the beetroot patch
– can cause localised swelling, pain, seek medical help.
Leo is playing his bouzouki and singing again,
Leo is in good voice, his fingers intricate in flight,
amplified from the square of Kato Hora Milia
articulating the rising terraces of green to the sky.
Come, swoop down snake eagle
from your thermals scanning,
Circaetus, we have something for you
under the dancing leaves of that beetroot patch.
*
To answer your questions, this is what happened
and this is how it was written;
out of dark tunnels, a Kalamantiano dance,
children singing, the great literal.
That Spring we drove out of tunnels below Arkadia,
out of darkness saw Artemis grinning, the consort of dogs,
saw at every boundary the transition of common light.
The contours of the valleys shaping sound
the density of pine and plane trees breathing
the sun raising fire over Mount Taleton before Ilias.
That Spring Artemis sent all the big poets and little poets
hysterical down the mountain to the workshop of the sea
in search of the first songs still forming in the sealanes of trade.
We saw the falling down dance and the monodiplos,
counterclockwise ten steps forward, two steps back,
a 7:8 signature, step step in the agora to recover time.
The children sang late into the night
and we set out again on the tracts of the great literal,
the whole village melismatic, the going out and return.
Four Scenes
" ... the costumes and diversions of the present time."
Antonio Ponzo
Antonio Ponzo
Near the Rila Mountains
a man is dancing on the rim of an upturned drum
with Dionysus keeping time.
The men in red and green, the women red and white,
heads erect, the precise step, almost courtly
and time sent spinning.
At first the men danced with the men,
the women with the women,
then it broke out and the world exploded.
Everyone formed a big circle
arms raised together; the children danced,
the mothers with phones tried to catch it all.
*
A few days off from radiotherapy
to see Goya’s cartoons for the tapestries.
Was it the top floor of the Prado
flooded with light?
Careless youth at ease flying kites,
exchanging magnetic looks
in transparent colour,
dancing around a tree in a meadow.
Pictures woven into tapestries
as light threaded through time.
Shall I hold this parasol for you?
The sun, mi amor, is hot for us.
*
I remember on Naxos one night
in the narrow lanes of Naxos town
a boy leant out from a balcony
and asked for help to tie his tie.
And the girl behind him in the room
laughed and turned in a swathe of beauty.
A first night on Naxos in the summer,
an air of wonder in a bare room.
Later we sought out the young marble giants
buried in the garden of an old woman’s house.
Saw these kouros and kore rise
in a swathe of beauty unbroken.
*
Early spring morning before the rain
we sat in the square of Panagia Theotouko
and Petros said, ‘I was a captain,
I have been to those countries, but now retired.’
‘This village, of my family many years, many,
from the same family of Nifakis the poet,
you see him there, the stone head standing,
and there the house of the two mute brothers.’
‘And here even in summer, a little cooler,
you sit by the trees; we have to have the trees.’
And the rain fell like arrows of light,
making the air a chamber of birdsong.
a man is dancing on the rim of an upturned drum
with Dionysus keeping time.
The men in red and green, the women red and white,
heads erect, the precise step, almost courtly
and time sent spinning.
At first the men danced with the men,
the women with the women,
then it broke out and the world exploded.
Everyone formed a big circle
arms raised together; the children danced,
the mothers with phones tried to catch it all.
*
A few days off from radiotherapy
to see Goya’s cartoons for the tapestries.
Was it the top floor of the Prado
flooded with light?
Careless youth at ease flying kites,
exchanging magnetic looks
in transparent colour,
dancing around a tree in a meadow.
Pictures woven into tapestries
as light threaded through time.
Shall I hold this parasol for you?
The sun, mi amor, is hot for us.
*
I remember on Naxos one night
in the narrow lanes of Naxos town
a boy leant out from a balcony
and asked for help to tie his tie.
And the girl behind him in the room
laughed and turned in a swathe of beauty.
A first night on Naxos in the summer,
an air of wonder in a bare room.
Later we sought out the young marble giants
buried in the garden of an old woman’s house.
Saw these kouros and kore rise
in a swathe of beauty unbroken.
*
Early spring morning before the rain
we sat in the square of Panagia Theotouko
and Petros said, ‘I was a captain,
I have been to those countries, but now retired.’
‘This village, of my family many years, many,
from the same family of Nifakis the poet,
you see him there, the stone head standing,
and there the house of the two mute brothers.’
‘And here even in summer, a little cooler,
you sit by the trees; we have to have the trees.’
And the rain fell like arrows of light,
making the air a chamber of birdsong.
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Kelvin Corcoran lives in Brussels. His first book was published in 1985 and his Collected Poems in 2023, drawing upon the fifteen books published subsequently. His work has been commended by the Poetry Society, the Forward Prize committee and commissioned by the Arts Council and Medicine Unboxed. It is the subject of a study edited by Professor Andy Brown, The Writing Occurs as Song. Corcoran has edited an account of Lee Harwood’s poetry in Not the Full Story: Six Interviews with Lee Harwood, 2008. He is co-editor with Robert Sheppard of the New Collected Poems of Lee Harwood.
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