Forfatter: Jacob Gammelgaard

🇬🇧 The Blackbird’s (half) mid-morning nap

688.    He’s settled in a sycamore
        A quiet mid-morning
        Hidden by the leaves.
        I think he’s dozing.
        The body is still,
        The head sinks down,
        The neck withdrawn into the body.
        The eyelids close up,
        (It's’ a bird!).

689.    The blackbird sleeps,
        Or dozes, or something else,
        At least on one side,
        Just like the swifts,
        It is believed.
        Maybe the other side is awake,
        But I don’t think I’ll ever see it.

670.    If nothing else, I see
        Half a bird asleep.
        The body is at rest.
        The tip of the beak is lowered.
        Dreams in one half of the brain,
        Visuals in realtime in the other?
        Can he close down hemispeherically?

671.    After a few minutes
        He raises up his head,
        Opens his beak.
        The body still calm,
        Legs pulled up under him.
        He is waking, half or whole.

672.    He scouts about
        As all birds:
        Head and neck in jerks;
        Quarter or half turns,
        First to one side,
        Then to the other side.
        Repeated, watchful.
        A minute or two.
        The eye with its yellow ring;
        The regard stiff, black.
        Here, all is silent.

673.    Branch and leaves flap,
        He’s gone.
        He wanted time
        For himself.
        A quiet moment
        In the rush of the day.
        I have spied on him.

Small crane's-bill

1286.   This fall, small crane’s-bills,
        After years of discrete growth
        Scattered in the summer garden,
        found a breakthrough as brawns.

1287.   Breaking out of the garden asylum
        The crescent shape flowerbed
        Around the small appletree
        For worts and perennials in exile
        Threatened on their growth
        In cancelled gardens.
 
1288.   First, they took the flowerbed,
        A cover around the other plants:
        Burnet, orpines and mints.
        Then they grew out across the lawn,
        Close the high-mown paths.
        From there up and across old swards,
        Around the tufts of wild oregano,
        Under the small elderberry tree
        Forward among the rival groundelders and
        Spearpointed black- and boysenberry shoots.

1289.   Crept under the clothes-dryer,
        Moved along the edge of pond,
        Usurped space among the rhubarbs,
        In between the white yarrows,
        Growing freely in the tall grass,
        Extended further along the terasse
        Turned to the monastary flowerbed.

1290.   A spectacle of leaf patterns,
        Crescendo of green fertility,
        A vegetal triumph in a summer
        Divided into four parts:
        Wet, warm, parched, warm:
        An ambush of many plants
        That budded a second time,
        Like the small crane’s-bill,
        Who took it’s chance, helped by
        A planet at its tipping point,
        For an explosion of leaves
        In the enfeebled fall.

On turning a page in the works of Robert Burns.

To the Poet – from the Mouse

Ach, Rabbie, apologies accepted;
Your words ring true, you do regret it.
Tho’ mice and men remain related,
   Yet, we know the price;
After all, it is to be expected
  That men kill mice.

Rabbie, we could have had a blether,
A wee natter on life and weather.
In winter we could sit together
  By the fire warmer;
Surely, we could discourse forever,
  My fellow farmer.

Kindred minds, ay, Rabbie Burns,
That we are, and curse him that spurns
A mouse that feels and learns
  From past and present.
Wisdom, they say, is man’s gift to earn,
  But nay, it isn’t.

I shall miss the barns, the fields, the hay.
I shall even miss the owl and cat at play.
Perhaps we may return there one day,
  Poet of the land,
Before our joys and soils are blown away
  And turn to sand.

Death by scythe and death by plough
Is now death by poisons anyhow.
Fens and trees and thickets cease to grow;
  The land’s undone:
A barren scape where empty rivers flow;
  Rabbie, it’s gone.

Man’s dominion is beyond belief;
All your fears will turn to grief.
Tho’ to you it may be small relief
  That mice may then
Retake and repopulate; in brief:
  Replace all men.

Rabbie, in parting let’s rejoice
That men may one day take your advice
And stop the killing and maiming of mice.
  Think, what a feastie!
Be well, may these humble words suffice,
  Yours truly, Beastie.

(2022)

Rabbie is the Scottish nickname for Robert Burns.

This poem does not properly speaking belong to the Ten Thousand Things Blog and is too squarely placed in the Anglo-Saxon literary canon in which I was formed. But it is related in content and I see it as a one the poems that lead me to the formative idea of this blog. The poem was written in English and no Danish version exists.

Eleftherna Venerations

485.	Ve gave them our best venerations
        Here on the mountain in Eleftherna,
        Ve spawned seed, acorns and nectar
        On stony ground, among prickly straws,
        In deep ravines, on stony cliffs.

486.	Venerations grew forth
        In the lazy dust, the swidden heat,
        In the time it takes
        A kermes oak to sink into the ground,
        In the time it takes
        A city to be reduced to rubble,
        Upon old stones,
        Among antique seeds.

487.	Come in under my shadow
        And ve will show you,
        What a seed can really do;
        Warrior, slave, senator, matriarch,
        Here where the stone stands,
        Where you were lowered down,
        Sacrificed, forgotten and dug up again.

488.	There, ve raised a memorial:
        My fruit at the headstone.
        On necropolis now they stand:
        The two ladies of Eleftherna,
        Fitted into each others shapes,
        Composite sisters in stone and wood,
        Until ve, an olive olding,
        Decays and withers to dust,
        While the stone remains
        From my veneration to the next.

489.	Come down into the gulley
        And ve will show you,
        What fig trees can really do;
        Keep the mountain in a grip
        For coming generations.
        Ve hold your memories and knowledge,
        Half secret, half hidden,
        Urns, amphoras, weapons, shields;
        The little ox and the hind half in leap
        Caught in fired clay,
        Hammered into gold.

490.	Come in under this wall
        And ve will show you,
        What ivy really wants:
        Along the agora, 
        Down the mountain side,
        Overflowing ancient walls,
        Descended in straight line
        From ancient seeds,
        Growing venerations of ivy
        In depth and glory of shiny leaves.

491.	Approach,
        Ve are living layers
        Of sun-baked, sucking, slicking bees.
        A buzzing ruckus
        So loud, that you stop,
        In wonder at what you see:

492.	Ve show you the queens of the city,
        And Elefthernas reiterations:
        All the temples, all art,
        The tower, the earth quake, the columns,
        All the villas, the cisterns,
        All states, all wars.
        Ve have seen generations
        Stack these stones and
        Sleep under these stars.
        And here ve stand
        Until they meet again.

New in Index Ten Thousand:

Ravine ◦ 485, Veneration ◦ 486, Kermes oak ◦ 486, Shadow ◦ 487, Ve ◦ 487, Sisters ◦ 488, Gulley ◦ 489, Fig tree ◦ 489, Hind ◦ 489, Ox ◦ 489, Ivy ◦ 490, Ancient ◦ 490, Ruckus ◦ 491, Slicking ◦ 491, Earth quake ◦ 492, Queen ◦ 492.

Glossary: Ve is the vegetal identity and personal pronoun. Veneration is the vegetal generation and keeper of the ground.

Eleftherna is the ruins of an ancient city on Crete, inhabited from ca. 900 BCE to 800 CE.

1259.	What is the pride of fish?
        I mean, how do they look,
        A proud fish?
        With bearing, head held high,
        A poised fish?
        I mean, do they feel pride?
        If yes, or just if,
        About what?

1260.	About their own strength, mobility,
        Evolutionary excellence,
        Ability to grow, to hunt, to evade,
        Ability to spawn?

1261.	About their knowledge of water
        Their food, the enemy, the flock?
        The shoal, the population, the speed,
        Shiny scales, deep sea organs,
        Anatomical perfection?

1262.	Is it the curving spine,
        The whip of the tail?
        Streamlined organics,
        The body coordinated
        Into one movement, at once?

1263.	Or is it a pride
        About everything as a whole?
        I mean, the domain of fish:
        The ten thousand ways of water
        To be lake, to be sea;
        Enormous communities of beings,
        Landscapes of water, air and light,
        Freedom?

1264.	Is that it?
        Fish in their domain:
        Pride and beauty in
        Cascades of ecosystems.

1265.	A proud fish,
        A wise fish,
        Gliding and feeling
        Their way through water
        In their colossal
        Flickering lighted domains,
        With the right to be fish,
        The ability to be fish,
        A free fish.

New in Index Ten Thousand:
Fish ◦ 1259, Shoal ◦ 1260, Deep sea organs ◦ 1261, Streamlined organics ◦ 1262, The domain of fish ◦ 1263, Ten thousand ways of water ◦ 1263, Pride of fish ◦ 1264, Free fish ◦ 1265.

The Danish Laws of Nature (1)

Law on Abolition of the Kingdom

198. Ve do see how everything alive has a desperat urge to live. How everything alive is a desperat act of staying alive. How this desperation extends without pause to the boundaries of the kingdom.

199. Ve notice the existence of categories. Categories accumulate knowledge on the part of the categoriser, but not on the part of those who are categorised. In this way we have been categorised into a state of ignorance.

200. Ve know that the Kingdom lays a ring around us. Ve are surrounded by the knowledge of others.

201. Ring is a figure of speech. Kingdom is also a figure of speech. Figures of speech are a sort of desperation that have turned into a habit.

202. Ve do see how everything alive has ways of acting. The ability to act is the universal will to be alive common to alle kingdoms; without boundaries, without categories.

203. This ability to act ve call agency. Agency is the physical, plastic, fertile form. To grow is an expression of agency. Vos agency.

204. Ve grow ourselves out of category (as a concept). 
     Ve grow ourselves out of the kingdom (as a figure of speech).

205. Ve abolish the Kingdom as a category and a figure of speech.

206. The Kingdom no longer exists.


New in Index Ten Thousand:
Agency • 203, Desperation • 201, Ability to act • 202, Category • 204, Alive, staying • 198, Kingdom • 205, Ring • 200, Knowledge • 199.

Billhook and Hedge

I. As I'm young and green

As I’m young and green among the brambles,
And cars are small and black with wooden panels,
We drive down Devon country lanes;
Deep hedges rear up on both sides
From hill to hill and on down the coast.

The wind blasts the window, tugs my hair,
Warm summer air with dust, straw and pollen.
I revel in the speed and the blind corners,
Laced branches, thorns and twigs all form
A tunnel with me whooshing through inside.

Parents in front seats speak with reverence
Of hedgerows tended and trimmed 
For six hundred years or even more;
Yes, some might have been laid by Romans,
Because, look: still their roads run here.

Remembrances thread through the land
Connecting soil and hedge and road and me.
I stretch out my hand through the window
To life brimming in the hedges;
Time flies through my fingers.

II. A lifetime passes by

A lifetime passes by and I am grey.
Cars are small and blue and batteried.
We tour through the open countryside
Between unkept trees and boundary lines,
Decimated brushwood and hedges’ remains.

Trees, uncoppiced for decades,
Muddy ditches stuck in ooze,
A few pollard-willows for keepsake
Poke up their random heads;
An olding’s row of rotten teeth.

The fields are straight, right-angled,
Prowled by columns of agrotanks 
Ploughing to the shoulders of the roads;
It’s hell and monoculture here
On the windswept farmlands of Stevns*.

III. I inherited a billhook

I inherited a billhook from Devon,
From my aunt who died alone,
The way she had always lived:
Cowherd, farmgirl, milkmaid,
Oddball, weeder and owner of hedges.

The billhook lay in a rusty pile in her shed,
A lifetime of things wood, metal and plastic.
I had never seen such a tool before,
But there it was, the worm-bored handle,
Beckoning my hand.

Heavy, curved with a shape to swing,
A tool from ancient farming,
Made for trimming and laying of hedges,
Millions of miles of live fencing,
A poor, mosquitobitten, toilsome life.

Billhooks have been in use for millennia,
Knives are known from the Iron Age,
Shaped, adapted and balanced to purpose
By the growths and features of the land;
This tool has soil and knowledge in it.

IV. For three decades

For three decades the billhook lay 
In my toolbox waiting for me to learn,
And I thank my aunt for leaving me,
Awkward and hoarse on her hermit lot,
This testament of life and tool.

The billhook is 38 cm long and weighs 600 grams.
The blade is made from steel, 23 cm long.
It curves at the top, knife and hook in one,
Made for gripping and cutting twigs and brush;
John Riley, Sheffield, stamped on the blade.

The blade is broad an double-edged,
Curved and sharp, formed as a chubby sickle.
The back edge is straight, made for axing,
Chopping down branches and bushes
In the laying and trimming of hedges.

V. A living hedge

A living hedge is the life’s work of a farmer.
They say that whoever plants a tree
Steps into correspondence with death.
But I know that whoever plants a hedge
Shows compassion for children to come.

First, the hedge is lain from the ground up.
We may use hawthorn, maple and hazel
To give volume, good saplings and height.
Sloe and wild roses are good for density,
For bees, moths and nesting birds.

Ash, maple and crab apple for food and colour,
Servicetree, dogwood and privet for berries.
Join with wayfarer and guilder-rose for shelter,
Holly and laurel for deep, real green,
Ivy and thistle for seeds and flowers.

We plant low, and we plant tall.
We plant double combs with trees in-between
Consider primeval trees: oak, willow and elm. 
The entire hedge is three to five meters deep,
Three meters tall and a thousand species long.

Come ten years, and time to lay the hedge
With the sharp back edge of the billhook:
Young saplings are cut almost through at the root,
Laid down at an angle along the hedge;
New rootshoots will grow up and grow strong.

Stakes of ash or hazel are spaced along the middle,
Withes of hazel or willow are braided in between,
And laid saplings bent between the stakes.
They will grow while stakes and withes wither,
Repeat and refresh for fifty years or more.

The hedgerow thickens, widens and roots,
It entangles, it grows, it shoots, it spikes,
Setting buds, foliage and flowers.
The hedge will grow and do what hedges do:
A fauna haven for hundreds of years.

Here are hoverflies, lacewings and earwigs,
Woodlice, larvae and beetles of all kinds,
Spiders, spindlers, moths and rodents,
Sparrows, finches and centipedes,
Parasites, springtails and diggers.

Here are millipedes, hoverflies and bees,
Tits, wrens, mice and martens,
Digger wasps, squirrels and robins,
Aphids, hedgehogs, blackbirds and snails,
Worms, pupae and millions of ants.

VI. One spring day I go out

One spring day I go out in the shed,
Put the whetstone in a beaker to soak,
Sharpen the billhook’s rusty blade;
Firm grip, slow movements, no haste,
Nothing to finish, no deadline to meet.

Many have sharpened this blade before I;
My aunt worked it in her shed,
Before her, field hands in coarse fabrics,
Peasants in small white-washed cottages,
Backbent, hardhanded knife grinders.

Only my generation, the richest ever,
As we're fond of telling each other,
Cannot afford the space of a living hedge,
Nor the cost to lay it and care for it;
Only my generation has no time.

I reach through the thin garden hedge,
A green curtain to keep out idle looks.
A few sparrows are nesting in there,
To be cut away by midsummer day;
A blackbird hops on the swidden lawn.

With gratitude to Tom Hynes and Robert Wolton from the Devon Hedge Group who kindly made available three of the photos above. Their website, http://www.devonhedges.org, is a rich and loving fount of knowledge about hedges and the ancient craft of laying and tending them. The photos (and hopefully the poem), show just what a hedgerow can do: for wildlife, for landscapes and for human quality of life.

*) Stevns is a county south of Copenhagen.

Verses 113-139 in the Danish version The Blog of Ten Thousand Things.

New things in Index Ten Thousand: Ant • 135, Billhook • 120, Crab apple • 129, Ditch • 118, Edge of blade • 126, Fauna haven • 133, Farmland • 117, Field: right-angled • 119, Generation: homo s. • 138, Hawthorn • 128, Hazel • 132, Hedge • 113, Hill • 113, Hook • 125, Knowledge: farming • 123, Larvae • 134, Lawn • 139, Living hedge • 127, Learn • 124, Mason bee • 135, Parents: homo s. • 115, Peasant • 137, Pollen • 114, Remembrance: the land • 116, Rootshoot • 131, Seed • 129 , Shed • 121, Sloe • 128, Sparrow • 134, Whetstone • 136, Willow • 130.