‘Where is your theory?’
he asks. ‘What
is your aesthetic?’
I give him the
pied stilts stepping
it out on the bay
in low-tide light,
the bottle-brush bush
shaking with
warblers at work.
I explain I’m no
respecter of
birds that can’t
sing, dogs that won’t
bark, rudderless yachts;
that I salute
sooner the prisoner
poet who made
a life of observing
the ant. ‘My
theory,’ I say
‘is the warblers
working, the stilts up
on their stilts, the
‘world looking hard
at the word and the
word at the world.’
There are dreamscapes
and realscapes.
This one I suspect
is real
though the sun is walking on water
and the sea out at the yellow buoy
is silk.
An orange container-ship
is rounding North Head.
Green Rangitoto
pictures itself
and is not displeased.
Moehau, deep blue
insists on distance.
Swimming back
on my back
I become again
the connoisseur of clouds –
feathers and fleeces.
A gull drifts over
a tern
a gull again
white on
white
on blue.
A low-altitude
Exocet shag
(late for lunch?)
hurtles across.
This is the life that goes
godlessly on
a poem without words
a gift without conditions
a present
the nice old stones
the green lawns
the clever children –
clever and polite.
I was old
a visitor
an old lion
but in youth
how tempting
if a door had opened
a word been said
to step inside a moment
and wake middle-aged
drowning in honey.
The swallows are
gone, also the white
snails from fennel
along the roadsides.
The sunflowers have
been harvested.
The summer Swede
has gone back to
winter in Malmö.
up and down the
lines of vines. A good
season, they say.
At the bar in
the little café the
village drunk
is joined by
the waitress. Le patron
entertains them
with his pierrot
act, but stops to
make us a seafood
risotto with
mushrooms. Don’t be
deceived by oilcloth
and unemptied
ashtrays. This is France
and he can cook.
I’m telling Bill
Pearson about the
Department, my
surprise that it’s
gone, all the ones I
thought of as rocks
in a landscape –
Mike Joseph, John
Reid, Betty Shepherd,
John Reid may be
dead. I tell Bill
Allen has gone to
live in Australia.
Even as I say
it, it seems
unlikely. I give
him a farewell hug.
He submits,
flinching. It comes
to me only slowly
that they’re all
dead, even Bill.
I go to the window
and look out.
A medieval village
in moonlight looks
back at me.
Am I too dead?
Not yet. Only dreaming
and in France.
Battered, dirty,
fur torn out in
patches, the little
hang-dog stray
stands shivering in the
lane, wolfing scraps from
Next seen, he’s
drinking from the mill race.
He hobbles on
through the woods
past the château
hurrying on tender
paws as if he has
somewhere to go.
That path will take
him into the
nowhere of the garrigue.
The mind finds
happy endings
for him and doesn’t
believe them.
each beginning with lines supplied by Sam Sampson
Each cubicle, every theoretical base
offers an age of wishful thinking
from which we deviate
‘at our peril’.
The oracle however
knows what it knows, and
undercover
will keep it so.
To guard it
singing its praises (but only in private)
is sound.
Take this key
Look and lock.
Hold your head high.
Speak as if
it didn’t matter but in the knowledge
that a wrong note may be death.
There will be more in the morning.
You go winding from
distance, old mind-wanderer. Re-
found fabrications
won’t wound
but the hand
that forged a folly
may also make you a fortune.
No it was not a mistake
rather
that I wound back
the clock of what I knew
disunderstanding you.
You know about the whole in my heart
and that I am a swimmer.
Forgive
me my passes
my pauses
my paws-on-you
as I forgive those
that put their tresses against me.
It may be marred in the mourning.
‘External’ – enough to give some space
(and then some)?
Upstairs
still holds His breath
but if it’s true
(and it’s true)
we made Him in our image
it can’t be for ever.
Listen then for the mighty wind
the big exhalation
the sweetness
(will it be?)
of the cud of the Lord
chewed these millennia
let out at last
in a relenting sigh.
Give over God
is our daily prayer.
It may be four in the morning.
After a number of years
the landscape changes
but not Guantanamo Bay
where we squat unshielded at stool
under a tin roof
and waterboarding
is the sport of choice.
‘Go, Condaleeza!’ we cry
but the heavens are empty.
You wanted an eternity?
My friend, you have it!
There will be more
in the morning.
There are times (not many) when your whole life seems
an open book. Whatever takes place takes words
and the words are telling you
something. A biographer’s wanting your life?
You read her letter as a word of warning.
You want to improve your French?
Why not say so in verse? You battle your way
to the yellow buoy and feel an undertow –
the lovely pull of language!
Nothing it seems is empty quite of meaning,
and meanings not given their due in nouns and
verbs are inclined to complain.
But when the thought comes to you from a poem
by Jaroslav Seifert that – for all your words –
what you really want is death
you say the time has come to stop this scribbling.
It’s late. You’d like to sleep, but behind closed eyes
the words, like rats, are working.
Your books have read you too often. The songs of
your youth have forgotten you. This world’s an ear
that listens for something new.
Your pictures that have stared down at you so long
see scarcely even the one that once you were –
and sometimes the yellow buoy
as you swim towards it murmurs to its chain
‘Here he comes again,’ but without excitement.
How easy for Captain Oates
to ‘step outside for a moment’ through that door
marked ‘Hero’s End’. But did he hesitate there
straining to catch a voice calling from within
‘Oates, don’t do this! Come back!’ and hearing nothing –
nothing at all but the wind?
24.1.06
‘Forgetfulness’
that’s the name of the ferry
but the process has begun
before you reach the wharf.
‘Asphodel’
that’s Death
giving itself airs –
a lovely name
a kindly aspect.
Or might it be
‘Narcissus’
after one who died of love
for his own fine face
for his own
sad story?
So you arrive in the dream
with a handwritten pile
from which the wind tears
page and page and
pages –
so much remembered
so finely
forgotten.
It’s the worm-eaten sheets
torn, stained, blotted
the ferryman
likes best.
‘Have a seat there.
Make yourself comfy.’
I hear him on the wharf
the pirate sea-dog
John Silver
he his own parrot
cackling
‘Missing a word
‘a world
‘missing a word
‘missing.’
‘Elysium’ –
have you been there?
You pass through the needle’s eye
cross the black river
in silence
(and I think in pain)
to a sunlit field
of yellow
nodding heads.
‘Daffodil.’
‘Asphodel.’
‘Narcissus.’
Forgotten
all is forgiven.
Today would be my mother’s
one hundredth birthday.
She’s there
somewhere
the ferryman
assures me.
He tells me
she was reluctant to go
but silent –
stood in the prow
no tears
and never looked back.
Did grandfather Stead
(she wants to know)
row for Oxford
or Cambridge – or
(as sometimes asserted)
for one then
the other? These
claims for him I long
ago dismissed
but she’s heard there’s
a pewter mug inscribed
with his name
that proves it was
Oxford. I remember
a tall man
‘well spoken’, who
came only at Christmas
and gave me
always a half
crown. Catholic, a
sinner perhaps –
everything he’d
ever owned lost or
spent – he was found
dead in his bed in
a rooming house in
Mount Eden
arms crossed
over his chest in
an act of contrition.
I tell her I think
he’s rowing still
on the black river.
‘Frightened, bored, yes
and short of rest –
but you knew
what you had to do.
‘How vivid the colours were! –
and what a story!
Isabella
is a-born
in London.
Already
she’s forgetting
what she knew
back then.
I ask her, ‘Bella,
before the Big Bang
what was?’
She won’t tell.
Down Under
is Over and Above
and quite Beyond
the call of dooty
which may be why
John Silver’s long-johns
are lacking a lag
and Blind Pugh
(the one who won
the Black Spot)
was really Reilly.
Because of the plums
in my pocket
and the birds
in the plums.
Because of
the hard drive
and liking the look
of ‘alone’.
You start with something
unusable
and build.
The language if you listen
will tell you
where you must go.
Now the rains are falling
the flies have come indoors
and are restless in the heat.
They are little gods
(but you knew that)
secretive
unwilling to say
where they go in winter.
How could I forget her face?
but will she like
the way I remember it –
that sad sack
with a speech balloon
saying ‘This
is the King of the Jews.’
Rita, when we were at Clifton
remember those breakfasts
Weet-bix and milk
followed by brown toast?
And Lilburn
at the harpsichord?
Wonderful days!
Sadness holds our hands
and won’t let us
beat off the flies
which are very bad this summer.
Our bicycles are parked
by the garage
ready for another adventure.
Anne and Rita read each other well.
‘So that’s what you think of me,
you bitch,’ says Rita.
‘And you think I don’t know
what you did with Colin,’
Anne replies.
I zap the flies
with Mortein
while summer throbs on.
Sadness later but who so loved you then
as Mrs Tumbril
the lady next door
who used to shop for you on Thursdays
and bring in the milk.
Yes, she was an angel –
dead now, of course.
The bicycle boys may now rejoice
as I do
at the plan to pave Ferry Road
all the way to the wharf
Rita.
I thought we had lost you
but found you in the laundry basket
not hiding
or not meaning to
just dreaming of that blue hood I gave you
and your speech balloon.
I met a young man who said
he’d ‘found’ some of my books
from long ago – Molière,
Verlaine, I’ve forgotten what else
or he’d forgotten.
He said he supposed
he should return them. Was it a question?
He seemed to value them
because they’d been mine.
What could I say?
I’d have liked the Verlaine
and isn’t letting things go
the secret of Zen?
Philip Larkin was not
Phar Lap
but each was good
of its kind
2
William Faulkner
was less
than happy
but more
than Kentucky fried
Dickens
Last night’s walk
was with Bob Chapman.
‘Quite frankly …’ he said
as he used to
say when he was a
living legend.
He showed me the
map of a village. We
were to walk
its perimeter
but found ourselves
in that bushy
hollow by the
Stanley Street courts.
‘Quite frankly,’ said Bob
shaking his jowls
and blaming me. ‘You’re
looking well,’ I
replied, ‘especially
for one so recently
deceased.’
No the tui won’t shut up
and there’s no pleasure
in its three and then a fourth
harsh
unlovely notes.
Agent Arc-en-Ciel
returning to the scene of her crime
goes through it one more time
and asks herself (se demande)
why the plan failed.
The skies are livid.
It’s ten kilometres back
as the blow flies
and they fly a lot.
Here in the north she believes
are many lawyers
their signs on the grassy verges
‘Avocado’.
She may yet need one.
Meanwhile
she’s dreaming of Paris.
Poetry is sometimes
a lightless cave
a river through it and the talk
of water on stone.
Like blood
it belongs in the veins
closed to the public
open to need.
Words have their secret
ways of conjoining
of signing and
complaining.
Even under
a blue-eyed day
they can be the dark
living of the leaves –
as they were once
when you first
heard them in the womb
singing.
Already the second month
and still I’m surprised
by colour
lushness.
When they sent me away
what I remembered most
was tamarisk
beside the little gate,
the three steps down to the sand,
and the sound of waves lapping
when the moon rode them
so lightly
between the white weatherboard house
and the dark hulk
of Rangitoto.
It will be the same
when I die.
Wherever I travelled they asked
‘Where is your luggage?’
I told them
it was all in my head.
Later, alone in my room,
I unpacked an island.
Remember
how Anactoria walked
under willows at evening
where the Ngongotaha Stream
runs out into the lake?
It was long ago.
A poet
laboured at verses
to capture what cost her
no effort at all.
He failed of course.
She was an abstract of Beauty,
the melding of Nature and Art.
This is how it was
in Crete
when I walked for sure
over the bones of soldiers
and saw children
playing among flowers
who fled
alarmed at my tears.
Closing my eyes
while your soul was prayed for
Anactoria
I thought I caught for a moment
a sight of you
in the house of Death.
You were running from room to room
hunting for your rings
your necklaces of gold
your ‘things’.
Look at me once.
Note well what time and the sun
have done,
and look away.
Here on the page
I’m just as I was.
You say there should be laurels.
Let the page have them.
This late summer
Heaven was it
or hell?
the river brimming that night
and M. Le Crapaud
the toad at his table
one of those lights set in turf
marking the path to the floodlit
Pont du Gard.
Mottled
wattled and bloated
a brown sack
without excuses and
sick with excess –
and still the moths
came to his light
and still he gulped them down
manfully
toadfully
a duty
an on-going effort –
a scene it could be from Dante
the Glutton required to eat
to repeat
for ever
his one particular
sin of the Seven –
cruel of course because
nothing in Nature
had prepared him for a place
where the moths
would keep coming
where the Lord’s Bounty
would go on so! –
world without end.
for Mahinarangi Tocker
Chanterez-vous quand vous serez vaporeuse?
Will you sing
when you’re only a ghostly thing
when your self is no more
than the squeak of an unoiled door
a creak in the floor?
Will you sing then
lyrics to furnish a room
cantos of doom?
Where will you go when you die
what will you say to the sky
as your smoke goes up the chimney
and your world has a tear in its eye?
Will you sing when you’re gone away
down to the end of the ever
to row on the black river
– will you? Will you sing
when you’re not here and no more
than the squeak of an unoiled door
and a creak in the wooden floor?
Today it a do-nothin day
cept my Daddy
he hitch up the hosses
take the white folks to church.
That Miss Flora she say to me
‘You know what my name mean, boy?’
I tell her, ‘Yes, Missie,’
(coz she tell me befoh).
‘It mean flower, Miss Flora.’
That Miss Flora
she look right through a Darkie
right through
all the way to heaven.
One day I trimmin vines at the House
see through the winder
she wearin no dress.
I don look, I don look away
scared to deaf
she see me seen her.
Today my Granny
talkin bout that place
she call ‘Faraway’.
She say to me, ‘Boy
you’s gwine be big man.’
She eyes wet but she
grinnin like a hoss.
‘Big man. Big man.’
for Ann and Anthony Thwaite
The wind billowed the drapes at 4 a.m. at
Gloucester Terrace and it was Shakespeare. He was
there also at Low Tharston
where the moorhen with her red beak and green legs
had nested among ‘vagabond flags’ and reeds –
and in Oxfordshire again
under those low black beams he told me he’d heard
an overheated groupie, once, at the Globe
tell actor Burbage he should
knock at her door and say, ‘It’s Richard the Third’.
Shakespeare was there before him, astride, at work,
when a servant tapped to say
‘Ma’am, Richard the Third is waiting in the hall.’
‘Tell him,’ said Will, ‘that William the Conqueror
comes before Richard the Third.’
It was one of my many mistakes
disconcerting the stars
bringing a blush
to the pallors of winter.
No one answered my calls
not surprising
given that the heavens were empty
the exchanges abandoned
nest eggs
broken on the face of the moon.
And these were my better years
when everything stood up for me
and spoke in tongues.
How much worse had it been?
I will tell you
Jerk-off
ejaculate
there was a lot of that
hard-on
masturbate
ejackoffulate
some praying too
and trying not to
trying hard
(on).
Buying anything
was painful –
tennis racquet
bike.
You pretended
the choice had been made
long ago
you’d had the brand before
always used it –
(like Janet
in a whisper:
‘I’ll have the same’)
That’s how I found myself
with a chain guard
the sort of ‘men’s’ bike
a lady might ride.
It was just another
embarrassment.
I lived with it.
It was to be an evening picnic
on the slopes of One Tree Hill
ewes bleating
for lost lambs
tui in the flax
making their late raids
on the inarticulate.
Do you remember
what the wind said –
the phrases so exact
the timing / the intonation
so nearly perfect?
And the bible
that was one huge
embarrassment –
all that palaver
pretending to know how everything
began
and why
and for whom
and how it would end –
and what you had to do
to be ‘saved’
who to pray to
what to say.
Sometimes the words were nice
and the music
(I liked singing)
but the whole fat lie of it
the hypocrisy
the honey –
O Lord!
Later you would write:
‘Fearful
of the embarrassment
of a refusal
he created
embarrassment
by not
asking for
what was plainly
on offer.’
Innocent days!
Now we know wines
far places
exotic cuisine –
look down from our high
chairs
(holding a glass)
at cities that glitter
in the vast
continental
dark
like stars
(like cities).
We are gods.
Get in touch with yourself,
sailor.
Embarrassment
is a failure
of democracy.
The donkey stands
head bowed ashamed
of her enormous
ears, while the foal
who certainly loves
her tugs at her
udder. Their friend
the black ram with curled
horns who secretly
believes he’s
Joseph to her Mary
shares with them
the shade of over-
hanging trees. Today
the mistral
gusting down the
corridor of the Rhône
is beating
the last of the
poppies to bits. No
green is greener
than these spring
vines, no grey greyer
than olives in
flower, nor blue
bluer than the
windswept skies of
Provence that will
make you at evening
the gift of stars.
Pirandello
at his café table
in the Via Veneto
asked why
he had joined the Fascists:
‘If you knew how demeaning
democracy was
you would understand.’
And then:
‘What times we live in, my friend!
Did you know
the Principessa di Piemonte
has been inseminated
artificially?’
And later
under the arcades
of the Piazza Colonna
the poet Ungaretti
his blue eyes between slits
moving back and forth
like praetorian guards:
‘When war comes
so does greatness.’
16 May 1940
As Prime Minister
I address you
Signor Mussolini
assuring you
I have never been a foe
of Italy’s greatness –
assuring you also
that this appeal is made
in no spirit of weakness
or fear.
France has fallen.
Britain fights on –
if it must be alone
so it shall be.
I beseech you
in all honour and respect
let it not happen!
11 June 1940
‘I have told his Majesty it is time
to draw the sword.’
That was Il Duce
and this was war.
I switched off the set
The typist had run
behind the sofa
and was hiding her tears
in the cushions.
Through the open door
I could see the Via Veneto
deserted.
They had all run
to the Piazza Venezia
to see him
hear him.
One man
dwarfish in black
led two little girls
twins with bent legs
through the empty tables
outside Rosati’s.
January 1942
I could talk about pain
but what do you say
when you write home?
(‘Hullo Mum
here’s my regulation
24 lines marked
“Verificato per Censura”.’)
I got this wound
near Sidi Rezegh –
Musso’s arsehole we called it.
Now I’m in Bari
a prisoner of war
and they’ve cut off my leg.
I was prepared for death
not for the fight it is
to stay alive.
You have to fix
your mind on something –
force it to stay with you.
Today
an Eyetie’s kind greatcoat for blanket
I’m remembering
the Devonport ferry
green water under wharf piles
and that jump I’ll never make again
as the ropes grind on the bollards.
I give it all my thoughts
(‘and you too, Mum’)
all my love.
Count Ciano is anxious.
The Signora Mussolini
dressed as a bricklayer
or a peasant
her shot-gun shouldered.
She complains that starlings
are vanishing from pines
in the garden
of the Villa Torlonia.
‘Because you shoot them, Signora’
Ciano suggests.
She insists
it’s an omen.
‘The war is not going well.’
19 July 1943
I was once
this madman’s hero.
All morning he shouts at me
waving his arms
at war maps.
In North Africa
in Greece –
I have failed him –
Italy has failed him.
This lavish villa
all blacks and whites
like a cubed crossword –
it’s a nightmare.
The peacocks
scream in the garden.
1500 dead
but from the Fuehrer
no sympathy.
How do I tell him my Grand Council
wants to sue for peace?
24 July 1943
Black steps down
to a green door
half hidden by
honeysuckle –
rooms light
white and
almost empty
but for Ezra’s
chairs and table –
pale wood
hand-made
thuk thuk of olive press
plof of bucket
dropped
into the well –
long views over olives
to the Golfo di Tigullio –
murmur of bees
in lavender
like these rumours
of a coup d’etat –
and Ezra gone
(gone mad)
to Rome
‘to save
‘the Duce
‘the Dream.’
11 January 1944
Ciano’s dead
but you knew that –
not even the Duce
could save his son-in-law
or wanted to.
I used to see him
at the Acquasanta Golf Club
wearing whites
and once
at the Countess Pecci-Blunt’s
cocktail party
with his film-star friends
his face already
a handsome bronze
cast
for history.
They say he died bravely.
It was done at the firing range
outside Verona.
Those militiamen
were rotten shots.
An officer Furlotti
finished the job
with a shot to the head.
May 1944
I’d been in Egypt
with NZDiv
but Cassino was my first battle
my first wound.
When I rejoined my unit
we’d moved on to Sora.
I was up a tree
by the railway station
filling my rucksack with cherries
when shells came over.
I saved the cherries.
It was at Avezzano
we found the twenty-two
dead civilians –
a reprisal for sabotage.
The Teds were just three hours
ahead of us
and retreating
blowing the shit out of everything
as they went.
They were laid out in a line.
I counted them:
three old men
a dozen women
seven little kids
with skinny legs.
28 April 1945
When we came for them at the
the Duce’s girlfriend
couldn’t find her knickers –
they were lost in the bed.
‘No time for those,’ I told her.
(No need for underwear
where they were going!)
We stopped on the empty road
beside some gates.
You can see his name there now
on a black cross
with the date of his death.
Down through trees
I could see the lake
reflecting the sun.
It felt like spring.
When we brought out our guns
she tried to get in the way
frantic:
‘Mussolini must not die.’
She took the first shots.
‘Aim for the heart,’ he said
pulling his lapels apart.
When I saw them next
they were lying
in the Piazzale Loreto
A woman had fired five shots
into his head –
‘For my five dead sons.’
Another squatted
and pissed on his face.
When a drunk kicked out his eye
we fired in the air
and drove the
crowd back.
It was then
we hung them by their ankles
from the ruined roof
of the Esso forecourt.
Her skirt fell around her face.
Our chaplain
Don Pollarole
stuffed it between her legs
wanting (he said) to hide
Italy’s shame.
8 May 1945
Now the great storm
has rolled over us
with its iron wheels
what is there left
to pray to
but the rain?
Spring comes at last.
Il Pape
is a man in a mirror
shaving before breakfast
the Mother of God
and all her Angels
are broken stone
and we are the dead
i morti
in mezzo ai fiore
with nowhere to go
with nothing left
to say or to do.
late July 1948
Returned to Milan
buying petrol
in the Piazzalo Loreta
I recognise those iron bars
painted red now
where the bodies
hung by their heels.
On a blank wall
VIVA IL DUCE
blurred by the rains
of three or four winters
is legible still.
I remember the shame
of the days that followed
how every eye was averted
from the hanging meat
in the butcher’s window.
Was it that we had cheered
his greatness
or that our cheers
had created it? –
that jutting jaw
the strut of a Caesar –
had we remembered our history
we might have foreseen
a Roman death.
26 June 2004
the sun the same
the sea still
greenly transparent.
Rapallo
looks back at us
at our white yacht
Vagabond III
indifferent that once
Ezra sailed in her
that one
century has passed
into another.
Massimo
too young to remember
knows
what he inherits.
It is his.
It is history.
A catheter was the last straw. My sister
made ‘a rational decision’ – it was time
to die, but she misjudged
the dose – or was it the hours those drugs would take?
‘Saved’, she was told her medication would be
watched – no more hoarding her pills
– and to help her beat her Black Dog there would be
counselling. She was marking time now, hanging
fire, but it wasn’t all waste.
Sometimes we visited her in that Home for
the Helpless – sat in the sun looking over
the lake, our backs to Bedlam;
sometimes wheeled her to see a James Bond, or
something romantic. Talking about the past
she laughed so much I worried
she might fall out of her chair. Death came in its
own slow time. She was laid out in her son’s house
all the grandchildren Maori
and Pakeha goggle-eyed until someone
turned on the TV which stole their attention.
At her funeral I thought
I couldn’t speak, then spoke, remembering a
photo of her in school uniform with three
friends, and another up north
on the farm with cousins. She looked so pretty
and friendly, someone you’d like to meet at a
dance or take to the pictures.
Small boys avoid big sisters but mine in age
against all the odds in that battle with her
body proved that grace could win.
‘Daddy’s Girl’, I drafted these lines for you on
the warm stones of a Mediterranean
beach, on our father’s birthday.
Menton, 6.6.06
for Tony Axelrad
Demain des l’aube …
Tomorrow as dawn whitens the landscape
I’ll set out, because I know you expect me.
Through the forest, over the mountain I’ll go.
I can’t remain so far from you any longer.
Lost in my thoughts I’ll tramp the roads
Seeing nothing, hearing not a sound,
Alone, unrecognised, shoulders hunched,
Too sad to notice whether it’s day or night.
I won’t be looking for the gold of sunsets
Nor at the distant sails coming home to Harfleur,
And when I get there I’m going to lay on your grave
This wreath of green holly and flowering heather.
Les Contemplations, IV, xiv
Pendant que le marin …
While the sailor, doubting his calculations,
Asks the constellations to show him the way;
While the shepherd, frightened by moving shadows,
Seeks the faintest star to light his path through the wood;
While the astronomer places a single orb
Among a million brilliant points of light –
I must ask something other of the vast pure sky.
But what a black hole that dark sapphire has become!
How can I now, so late, learn to distinguish
Night itself from the blue-robed angel of death?
Les Contemplations, IV, x
Penelope’s upstairs
at her loom
‘not speaking’.
This morning I feel it –
the sea’s great gate is open.
I’ve said goodbye to the dogs,
Bark and Bite.
I feed the hens
and stand among them hearing
the dying fall of
their disconsolate
conversation.
It’s as if they know
any time soon
my men will come for me.
The asparagus
are spearing,
the crop of runner beans
will be good this summer –
and I will be gone.
for Margo White
There’s a Stead I
recognise only by
his picture
in the papers
and what’s said of him
behind the lines –
has my name, my
face, my (such as they are)
achievements –
doesn’t smile
often, and when he does (they
say) watch out! –
doesn’t suffer fools
(or anyone)
gladly … ‘No, no,’
I protest
‘this is not the man
who eats my lunch, reads
‘my newspaper, sleeps
in my bed’ – but who’s
listening?
The world’s sure it
knows you better than
you know yourself.
One day I’ll meet
the bastard, surprise
him, introduce
myself. ‘Hullo, C.K.
I’m Karl. We haven’t
met.’ ‘Let’s
‘keep it like that,’
he says, unfriendly,
and turns away.
This tiny flower
Kay tells me is a viola
purple with a yellow centre
bloomed once
and a second time
in a crack between concrete slabs
on the path to the back door.
With care
I pinched and pulled it out
beside a grape
(also self-sown, also transplanted)
where one more time (surely the last)
it blooms.
Read this however you will
like the flower
it means what it says
and does what it is.