Steve Brock
standing on the Puente Romano
in Cordoba
watching the rio Guadalquivir
run beneath
like time itself
I do the math
2,000 divided by 44=45
history is nothing more than this
45 times a life of error and uncertainty
the main lesson of monuments in Europe
for which you only queue twice
unless you want the audio guide too
but mostly we take ...
I wake up
in the middle of the night
in a panic
about my dead-end job
the credit card
the housing market
until poetry appears
like a window
I go through
& compose
a couple of works
of genius
by day light
they won’t be much
of course
but it’s enough
to get me
through the night.
Wednesday 28 November 2016, Adelaide
the day of the storm
I had a poetry reading
with Nathan Curnow
overland from Ballarat
to launch his collection
The Apocalypse Awards
an hour into the unprecedented
statewide blackout
I took his call
you bastard
you brought the apocalypse with you
a flock of starlings
rises like applause
from the roof
of her Majesty’s Theatre
I met Ted Berrigan
in a dream
wearing a T-shirt
standing in a sparsely
furnished room
the early Berrigan
not yet bed ridden
but distinctly
pot bellied
& the beard
of course
it was a vivid dream
I can’t remember
if he said anything
literary
but he seemed pleased
to be there.
Steve Brock published his first collection of poetry The Night is a Dying Dog (Wakefield Press) in 2007, and received a grant from Arts South Australia for the completion of ...
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