Movie
1
I like dinner music.
I like water in a clay jug.
I like it when the water rains on me.
2
I was just a tourist in those mountains. I drove wildly down
steep slopes through gorges and cascades. After the brutal
descent, I arrived at a belvedere with a breath-taking view.
3
I will tell you something: In 1897, three fragments of a
broken jug were discovered in Egypt. They were 3000 years
old. Poems were painted on the fragments. One of them is
the poet smells his lover’s shirt …
In 1951, French Egyptologists found twenty-eight more
pieces of the same jug and the rest of the poem was restored
that sniff of sweetness instantly
transports him to the South Seas
4
O Rio dos Poetas
I met a sage in a state of bliss
who subsisted on a glass of milk each day.
Below him stretched a great emptiness
carved out of existence, the head-waters
of the Mondego River.
A short distance away was
the birthplace of the ‘discoverer’ of Brazil.
5
My father died in December.
With my brothers I carried him
to the low house reserved
for dead soldiers.
When it was my turn to speak
I recalled driving though green paddocks
in his Chevrolet,
the road driving into my eyes.
It was the first day of the holidays.
We got lost in the traffic
and separated from the cortege
so we stopped for sandwiches and beer
and played billiards in a club.
A band was set up to play
but after a dispute with the management
they took their gear away.
I hope I never
I hope I never
see that part of Auckland again.
6
Language is my neighbourhood.
I live in Alphabet City.
The people who live here open their hearts to the sun.
Today was the birthday of Louis Braille, the inventor of a
reading system for the blind,
the day the sputnik fell back to Earth.
My horoscope says:
‘Writing frequently will help you sustain a relationship with
someone at a distance.’
7
At night I watch the moon and imagine exciting places over the horizon. Only a fool does not see that the vast industrial economies are temporary. I say too much. My throat is infected with words. At the country hospital, I am treated by a beautiful doctor.
That evening we drink wine from the valley on the balcony of the hotel. Look, she says, the moon is moving into the distance, three centimetres each year, which is the speed at which fingernails grow! We sing revolutionary songs until all hours, drinking to friendship between our two countries.
In her language, the word for ‘Sunday’ is ‘resurrection’. I leave
the following morning.
8
This existence is not the original.
Like love itself,
the universe is mostly smoke and mirrors,
I am I,
the beginning of illusion.
You are you,
the centre of confusion.
I write to you alone at night,
speaking into the silence.