Poem
Everything happens fast and then goes –
the new movie you were waiting for
that you’ve suddenly just seen, the tunnel
under the harbour that seemed to take forever
now built and grooved by a million trips.
In winter fruit trees bud, shops
are full of summer clothes; only this
mind is slow, still stalling on the same
questions, never getting it, left behind
by life as by some wild-eyed nag
storming down the street, her hoofprints
pasted in the grass.
Welcome to the feast, piccolo pasero,
A feast that never ends, of loyalty and treachery.
Two are sold for a farthing, little sparrow
Hold the hearts close to your heart:
they’ll feed each other blooms of colour
and the nudity of shapes
until you are bursting
We came for a death,
climbed the highest mountain
cast ash
reclined on a granite slab,
our old faces tinted rose
pinked by a collapsing sun.
And for our mate, scattered about us,
grey wafers for our communion,
a slow recitation of the mountains spread,
Miklos Radnoti, marched from forced labour
in Yugoslavia back into Hungary, came to rest
near a bend in the Radca, at what his translator
describes as ‘a strange lonely place’ where
You set down orange, with a dab of blue
and this grows into art
of a non-offender’s kind,
innocent as a fart in the footy crowd.
Meanwhile, the killing stumbles on
Waiting.
Starched hospital gown.
Frozen present tense.
Why am I smelling
tigers?
The kitchen vessels that sustained
Your printed books, my poems, our life,
Are fallen away. The words remain –
Not all – but those of style and worth.
Imagine the moment of hesitation:
the catch in his voice,
knowing
he could not turn back: after years
up and down the river, a request
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