Educating the body – Kevin Ireland

Educating the body – Kevin Ireland

when she asked
her sudden: why?
she tricked no answer
from my eye

when she tried
to make me slip
she forced no stammer
from my lip

she tried to joke
to sting to trip
her efforts could not
shake my grip

what should she do
with one so sly?
even my body
learns to lie




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A hidden message – Kevin Ireland

A hidden message – Kevin Ireland

her kiss on the mirror
was crushed and mute:
why couldn’t she simply
leave a note?

I rubbed at her lipstick
and met my eye:
and got the message
hidden away




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Striking a pose – Kevin Ireland

Striking a pose – Kevin Ireland

we’ll stock up books
and wine and pie
then stop the clocks
and never die

we’ll nail the windows
brick up the door
and live on a mattress
on the floor

if death still comes
we’ll strike a pose
and hold our breath
until he goes




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Deposition – Kevin Ireland

Deposition – Kevin Ireland

I cannot
give you words
which turned
as succulent as flesh
upon the nib:

thin men
write gaunt poems
and each word
sticks out
like a rib




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Parade: Liberation Day – Kevin Ireland

Parade: Liberation Day – Kevin Ireland

Think of a tree-lined city street
on an early autumn day;
fashion placards and bunting;
imagine a display
of dripping clothes
drying among the flags and signs
hung from the balconies;
think flags on to washing-lines.

People this street;
create language and breed.
Then think of, say, twenty tanks,
cornering at a terrifying speed,
powdering the paving-bricks;
imagine parachutes, drifting like thistle seed
through the gusts of autumn leaves and sticks.

Nor picture the infantry,
young, strong,
measuring with hobnails
their heroic song.
Yet make this song trail form the distance,
though the soldiers are near:
the rhytjm is significant,
the words need not be clear.

Think of a happy street
on an early autumn night;
imagine tables and chairs beneath the trees,
and the gay light
of colored globes,
swaying with flag and sign.

People this street;
create chatter and wine.
Then think of, say, a billion stars,
and a moon darting at a terrifying speed
from darkness, to darkness again.
Erase it all
with sudden drenching rain.

Now picture the infantry,
cold, damp,
measuring with hobnails
the way back to camp.
Yet make their tread trail from the distance,
though they are near:
gently imagine them,
their future is not clear.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

A Natural Grace – C. K. Stead

A Natural Grace – C. K. Stead

Under my eaves untiring all the spring day
Two sparrows have worked with stalks the mowers leave
While I have sat regretting your going away.
All day they’ve ferried straw and sticks to weave
A wall against the changing moods of air,
And may have worked into that old design
A thread of cloth you wore, a strand of hair,
Since all who make are passionate for line,
Proportion, strength, and take what’s near, and serves.
All day I’ve sat remembering you face,
And watched the sallow stalks, woven in curves
By a blind process, achieve a natural grace.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, III – C. K. Stead

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, III – C. K. Stead

The prim lips, homing, round the wind,
Condensing news along the Strand.
Nerveless, the words assault, descent –
Stiff jaws convey them underground.

The verb that rackets through the mind
Transports the body far beyond
Expected stops.
Swirled on the wind
The lost, chaotic flakes ascend.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, II: Out ant de barber est tremblant sur tant d’ombres – C. K. Stead

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, II: Out ant de barber est tremblant sur tant d’ombres – C. K. Stead

On steps of the British Museum the snow falls,
The snow falls on Bloomsbury, on Soho, on all
Cradled in the great cup of London.
On all the lions and literary men of London
Heaping in gutters, running away in drains
The falling snow, the city falling.

Snow behind iron railings, drifts, collects,
Collects like coins in the corners of Nelson’s hat
(Newbolt from a window in the Admirality shouting
‘Umbrellas for Nelson’ and waving a sheaf of odes)
And down the long avenue

There through her aquid glass
Circumambient Regina, turning slowly form the pane,
Is seen imperiously to mouth ‘Alber, my dear,
How do we pronounce Waitangi?’
And snow descend.

There I met my grandfather, young and bearded,
With thick Scandanavian accent, who asked me
Directions to the dock; and later departed,
Bearing me with him in his northern potency
South.
South. Earth’s nether side in night
Yet hardly dark, and I under the day
That’s scarcely light.
Flakes descending, dissolving
On the folds of a cape
on a single blue ear-ring,
On a bowlder beneath the great trees of Russell Square.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, I: Bimmorie, O Binnorie – C. K. Stead

Pictures in a Gallery Undersea, I: Bimmorie, O Binnorie – C. K. Stead

In Ladbroke Square the light on waxen branches –
The orange light through two veined leaves
Tenacious in frost.
Upstairs, she lit the gas,
And drew bright curtains on the whitened eaves,
And said (her hand above the slowly turning disc)
‘I shall never go back’.
Mozart in the delicate air
Slid from her glass, beat vainly against the cushions,
Then took off gladly across the deserted Square.
‘You too must stay’ (loosening her sun-bleached hair)
‘You more than I – you will defeat their fashions’.

Invisible fins guided her to my chair.

Pictures in a gallery undersea
Were turned facing the wall, and the corridors were endless;
But in the marine distance, floating always beyond me,
A girl played Mozart on her sun-bleached hair.

So that wherever I walked on that long haul, midnight to dawn,
Stones of a sunken city woke, and passed the word,
And slept behind me; but the notes were gone,
Vanished like bubbles up through the watery air
Of London, nor would again be heard.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Carpe Diem – C. K. Stead

Carpe Diem – C. K. Stead

Since Juliet’s on ice, and Joan
Staked her chips on a high throne –

Sing a waste of dreams that are
Caressing, moist, familiar:

A thousand maidens offering
Their heads to have a poet sing;

Hard-drinking beaches laced with sun,
The torn wave where torn ships run

To wine and whitewashed bungalows.
This summer sing what winter knows:

Love keeps a cuckoo in its clock,
And death’s hammer makes the stroke.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The precious pearl – Pat Wilson

The precious pearl – Pat Wilson

The oyster shuts his gates to form the pearl.
He knows he has a saviour caught within him,
Poor fool, old oyster. And it works against him,
An irritant that’s locked within his shell,
A single-mindedness that thins his hear,
Turns it to narrowheartedness. Yet he,
Poor fool, poor oyster, used to love the sea
In all its many forms, to every part
Open with tranquil, unassuming jaws.
Then that foul irritant was driven in,
And snap! the wounded tongue cherished its sin
Until at last by hard, immobile laws
A shining, perfect pebble made from wrong –
A perfect grievance – rolled from off the tongue.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Tree – Pat Wilson

The Tree – Pat Wilson

The day the big tree went
There came two rather seedy-looking men
Full of mysteries of their craft.
They spoke loudly yet confidentially to each other,
Nodded to me and my brother,
Said good morning to my brother’s wife,
Cleared away all the little children of the neighbourhood,
And addressed themselves
To their big, supple saw.

Two or three hours later under the tree
They were still only half-way through.
The cut had a tell-tale concave scoop
Where each had been pulling down at the end of his stroke.
There was much previous talk of wedges,
Much arranging of ropes,
Calculation of angles,
And my brother and I were taking turns at the saw.

And so we all got friendly there with each other,
Putting the mysteries away
Under the great macrocarpa tree.
And when it started to lift and heave
And when the earth shook and the great sigh went up
As it fell and settled,
Then all the birds came flying out in a cloud
And all the children flew in with shouts an cries
And started a battle with the cones
And made their huts and houses in the fir.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Curvier Light – Pat Wilson

Curvier Light – Pat Wilson

Perennial fluctuation,
Interior lift of the sea,
Mist or a light rain, and silence –

Suppose our breathing is this movement
This mist, our wishes coming back to us,
The rain, some forgiveness of our rashness,
The night, all that is against us –

Land all along one side,
One lamp turned low in the cabin
Two lights to sea and then great Curvier,

Admirable light!
Swinging, like a discus
On the arm of its taut brilliant beam,
The whole massed weight of the night!




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Farewell – Pat Wilson

The Farewell – Pat Wilson

And so, one day when the tide was away out,
The gulls there dancing along the edge of the sea,
We walked across the sand, down to the boat
And began again – she to protest and appeal
I to refuse, looking aside, and then turning
And smiling…
For was it not as if I had
Whatever it was that she asked, but who could persuade her
Of that? nor was it true that I could pretend
For ever…
and all the gulls there, crying and playing,
Hunting, and all the reds and browns and yellows
Of late afternoon, and the last tints of the blue
Going out with the tide, and the boat drawn up there fast
Becoming high and dry on the sand as we talked.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Anchorage – Pat Wilson

The Anchorage – Pat Wilson

Fifteen or twenty feet below,
The little fish come creeping round the anchor chain.
I could not have it quieter now,
Not anywhere, nor could there be less movement
Anywhere at all than here.

The bay moves into night.
The shadows come to watch and wait in every hollow
Till they have gathered-in all.
But moon comes over the rocks; she lights the little fall
And rise and fall at the beach.

Deep water, deep bay
So still and calm for one whole night in the south-east
That day has never come,
And I am still upon my knees out on the stern,
And you and I still watch
Down twenty, thirty feet below.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

At the Fox Glacier Hotel – James K. Baxter

At the Fox Glacier Hotel – James K. Baxter

One kind of love, a Tourist Bureau print
Of the Alps reflected in Lake Matheson

(Turned upside down it would look the same)
Smiles in the dining room, a lovely mirror

For any middle-aged Narcissus to drown in –
I’m peculiar; I don’t want to fall upwards

Into the sky! Now, as the red-eyed tough
West Coast beer-drinkers climb into their trucks

And roar off between colonnades
Of mossed rimu, I sit for a while in the lounge

In front of a fire of end planks
And wait for bedtime with my wife and son,

Thinking about the huge ice torrent moving
Over bluffs and bowls of rock (some other

Kind of love) at the top of the valley –
How it might crack our public looking-glass

If it came down to us, jumping
A century in twenty minutes,

So that we saw, out of the same window
Upstairs where my underpants are hanging to dry,

Suddenly – no, not ourselves
Reflected, or a yellow petrol hoarding,

But the other love, yearning over our roofs
Black pinnacles and fangs of toppling ice.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Summer 1967 – James K. Baxter

Summer 1967 – James K. Baxter

Summer brings out the girls in their green dresses
Whom the foolish might compare to daffodils,
Not seeing how a dead grandmother in each one governs her limbs,
Darkening the bright corolla, using her lips to speak through,
Or that a silver torque was woven out of
The roots of wet spear grass.
The young are mastered by the Dead,

Lacking cunning. But on the beaches, under the clean wind
That blows this way from the mountains of Peru,
Drunk with the wind and the silence, not moving an inch
As the surf-swimmers mounted yoked waves,
One can begin to shake with laughter,
Becoming oneself a metal Neptune.
To want nothing is


The only possible freedom. But I prefer to think of
An afternoon spent drinking rum and cloves
In a little bar, just after the rain had started, in another time
Before we began to die – the taste of boredom on the tongue
Easily dissolving, and the lights coming on –
With what company? I forget
Where can we find the right

Herbs, drinks, bandages to cover
These lifelong intolerable wounds?
Herbs of oblivion, they lost their power to help us
The day that Aphrodite touched her mouth to ours.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The Lion Skin – James K. Baxter

The Lion Skin – James K. Baxter

The old man with a yellow flower on his coat
Came to my office, climbing the twenty-eight steps,
With a strong smell of death about his person
From the caves of the underworld.
The receptionist was troubled by his breath
Understandably.

Not every morning tea break
Does Baron Saturday visit his parishioners
Walking stiffly, strutting almost,
With a cigar in his teeth – she might have remembered
Lying awake as if nailed by a spear
Two nights ago, with the void of her life
Glassed in a dark window – but suitable enough
She preferred to forget it.

I welcomed him
And poured him a glass of cherry brandy,
Talked with him for half an hour or so,
Having need of his strength, the skin of a dead lion,
In the town whose ladders are made of coffin wood.

The flower on his coat blazed like a dark sun.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

At Taieri Mouth – James K. Baxter

At Taieri Mouth – James K. Baxter

Flax-pods unload their pollen
Above the steel-bright cauldron

Of Taieri, the old water-dragon
Sliding out from a stone gullet

Below the Maori-ground. Scrub horses
Come down at night to smash the fences

Of the whaler’s children. Trypots have rusted
Leaving the oil of anger in the blood

Of those who live in two-roomed houses
Mending nets or watching from a window

The great south sky fill up with curdled snow.
Their cows eat kelp along the beaches.

The purple sailor drowned in thigh boots
Drifting where the currents go

Cannot see the flame some girl has lighted
In a glass chimney, but in five days’ time

With bladder-weed around his throat
Will ride the drunken breakers in




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

The beach house – James K. Baxter

The beach house – James K. Baxter

The wind outside this beach house
Shaking the veranda rail
Has the light of the sky behind its blows,
A violence stronger than the fable

Of life and art. Sitting alone
Late at the plywood table,
I have become a salt-scoured bone
Tumbling in the drifted rubble,

And you, my love, sleep under quilts within
The square bunk-room. When I was young
(Hot words and brandy on my tongue)
Only the grip of breast, mouth, loin,

Could ward off the incubus
Of night’s rage. Now I let
The waters grind me, knowing well that the sweet
Daybreak behind your eyes

Will not be struck dead by any wind,
And we will walk on the shore
A day older, while the yoked waves thunder,
As if the storm were a dream. Sleep sound.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

Appologies

Appologies for the delay in posting this week. I managed, somehow, to blow up my graphics card and have been unable to access my computer. Thankfully, I have been able to purloin some computer time at work!
Hopefully once the graphics card is replaced, I can recommence posting each morning.
Thanks for your understanding :D

Election 1960 – James K. Baxter

Election 1960 – James K. Baxter

Hot sun. Lizards frolic
Fly-catching on the black ash

That was green rubbish. Tiny dragons,
They dodge among the burnt broom stems

As if the earth belonged to them
Without condition. In the polling booths

A democratic people have elected
King Log, King Stork, King Log, King Stork again.

Because I like a wide and silent pond
I voted Log. That party was defeated.

Now frogs will dive and scuttle to avoid
That poking idiot bill, the iron gullet:

Delinquent frogs! Stork is an active King,
A bird of principle, benevolent,

And Log is Log, an old time-serving post
Hacked from a totara when the land was young.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.

My Love Late Walking – James K. Baxter

My Love Late Walking – James K. Baxter

My love late walking in the rain’s white aisles
I break words for, through many tongues
Of night deride and the moon’s bone yard smile

Cuts to the quick of our newborn sprig of song.
See and believe, my love, the late yield
Of bright grain, the sparks of harvest wrung

From difficult joy. My heart is an open field.
There you may stray wide or stand at home
Nor dread the giant’s bone and broken shield

Or any tendril locked on a thunder stone,
Nor fear, in the forked grain, my hawk who flies
Down to your feathered sleep alone

Striding blood coloured on a wind of sighs.
Let him at the heart of your true dream move,
My love, in the lairs of hope behind your eyes.

I sing, to the rain’s harp, of light renewed,
The black tares broken, fresh the phoenix light
I lost among time’s rags and burning tombs.

My love walks long in harvest aisles tonight.


On the death of her body – James K. Baxter

It is a thought breaking the granite heart
Time has given me, that one treasure,
Your limbs, those passion-vines, that bamboo body

Should age and slacken, rot
Some day in a ghastly clay-stopped hole.
They led me to the mountains beyond pleasure

Where each is not gross body or blank soul
But a strongharpo the wind of genesis
Makes music in, such resonant music

That I was Adam, loosened byyour kiss
Form time’s hard bond, and you,
My love, in the world’s first summer stood

Plucking the flowers of the abyss.




O'Sullivan, V. (Ed.). (1979). An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry. Wellington: Oxford University Press.