Poems
daily toil in the fields of light.
They never question our wishes.
They can fail, but not misunderstand.
They are our strangeness that we are blind to.
At night they lie like maimed spiders
or star fish swept to shore. They know
about love as much as mouths and eyes.
Throughout the day, they give the mouth ... (read more)
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.