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His latest cd, , is released on February 2 on Hyperion Records

Photo (c) Kacper Pempel

This week on Front Row we’re running a series of January items in which artists and commentators encapsulate these dark days of the year. Here is the poem contributed.

Ìý

JANUARY

Harsh, hateful month, yet morning’s moon,

my silver penny, dear as dark,

floods ash buds black, as first cars fume.

For January brings work, work, work.

Have you heard the town foxes bark?

How screams as sharp as yours or mine,

hungry and raw as children, spark

our small rooms by the railway line?

Ìý

Work ends.Ìý Dusk drops.Ìý I tramp from car,

call my old horse. Wreathed hill mists pass.

Our heated world already stars

daisies across the hoof-pocked grass.

The rescued mare, found fly-grazed, thin,

now trots with Christmas foal at heels.

A few days old, or thirty springs,

all charge for stables, leave night’s fields.

Ìý

Out January’s dark and freezing rain

I reach my kitchen’s warm cocoon.

I dream of my grandmother’s pudding,

hot steamed sponge sliding from the spoon

with dripping amber, her plum jam,

lost summer caught, red in jars’ rank.

She fed her neighbour’s hungry son,

I find tinned beans for a food bank.

Ìý

Are you in your warm kitchen now?

Keep off the killing New Year’s dark

which has drunk some we love, but how

in mud, in rooms, we make our mark.

Peel the potatoes.Ìý Stir the spoon.

I hope, before lit days, and many,

you meet a January moon.

How will you spend your silver penny?

Alison Brackenbury