Impossible to wield
The acreage of the fabric that unfolded,
Slung from his shoulders like a crumpled field:
The distance from one Christmas to the next
When he was only seven
Was aching there; a foreign city flexed
Among the ripples; a face, the star-shocked heaven
About his flailing arms were shrugged and moulded.
Lulled in a nook of North West Bay,
The water swells against the sand,
Hardly more liquid than Venetian glass,
In which clear surface, just a little way
From shore, some four or five petite yachts pass
With languid ease, apparently unmanned,
Adrift along the day,
The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light
On the faces that drift below,
On the faces that drift and blow
Down the night-time, out of sight
In the wind's sad sough.
I was playing in the street
no one paid attention to me
as I made forms out of sand
mumbling Rimbaud under my breath
once an elderly gentleman overheard it
— little boy you are a poet
just now we are organizing
a grass-roots literary movement
he stroked my dirty head
gave me a large lollypop
and even bought clothes
in the protective coloring of youth
I didn’ t have such a splendid suit
since first communion
short trousers and a wide
sailor’ s collar
Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize
go upright among those who are on their knees
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust
you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony
be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous
in the final account only this is important
5 am. One-quarter past.
Distant chimes inform me this.
A bell peal knells the mist.
And sunlight’ s
not yet bludgeoning.
But some light gets blood going.
Last night it was snowing
and now
every path’ s a pall.
Though mine the only footfalls
at this hour of awe. Above
hangs a canopy of needle leaf.
Below, the season’ s
mean deceit —
that everything stays
white and clean.
It doesn’ t, of course,
but I wish it. My prayers
is my season
of defeat.
Though all
is green
and death
is done,
I feel alone.
As if the stone
rolled off
from the head
of the tomb
is lodged
in the doorframe
of my room,
and everyone
I’ ve ever loved
lives happily
just past
my able reach.
And each time
Jesus rises
I’ m reminded
of this marble
fact:
they are not
coming back.
Up late watching slug porn, you confess
you had a boyfriend who could spin you
like that, slug grace and slug ballet — we don’ t
touch the topic of slime — and those eyes
dangling from tentacle tips must be a
kind of love or lust, sighting farther and
nearer all at once. (But are those eyes?)
Slug sublimity suggests love’ s a drag,
touch that lingers and leaves a wet trail of
memory and... What did we do before
YouTube? Boob tube. Boobs we have none; slugs,
of course, don’ t care, can’ t tell girl from boy,
Is unwritten, though it has lived in violence.
First the factory stood, quiet as an asylum.
Then the annihilating mallee with its red fists of blossoms
and the mountain ash creeping over it like a stain.
I have no proof, but I tell you
there were leadlight windows here once, barred.
They cast a little striped light on the women.
Now in scrub and yellow broom I stand on a history
braided and unbraided by stiff Irish wrists.
The rope and span and carded wool are unpicked
as are their faces and names.
Purveyor of rot and whatnot,
entrepreneur of I forgot,
with wrists hard as hammers —
that birthmark a slot —
grip it, strip it, flip it hard —
ramp my shard.
If fear be sexy, a synch
& a match —
Gone the way of wax & worms —
gone like November 2011 —
sweet by nature, mean by culture —
“Goodbye, luck, you idiot,”
said the Fox to the Grapes.
“I love you,” replied the Grapes.
