Dada Street
He didn't fit in anywhere else but here:
walking down Dada Street. An uncrowned king
of finance, he ended up with nowhere
else to go but Dada Street, still unable
to pay his own way in the world. Building
town-houses in the suburbs. The Bible.
Twenty years ago today, all that mattered.
His evangelical vocation, his fear
of both God and the Devil, had been preferred
to Mammon. Jesus was not too far away
to whisper cruel secrets into his ear.
His hammer weighed heavy in his hand that day.
To caress or collide? To fast or feast?
Fear of spontaneous combustion and a bad
back frightened him into a few months of rest:
rest and recreation in the final days
of pregnancy (paid for by Mum and Dad)
penning new lyrics to tin-pan melodies.
He came away from his parent’s country
house grieved by the blemishes on his soul.
It was not as he had hoped it would be,
a conversation or a conversion.
It was a sermon. A weight-bearing wall.
Without a fear in the world, he got on.
The Grin without the Cat
We had enjoyed good daylight. When given
luck with the weather, our enjoyment was
unadulterated by electric light.
He danced. There was no air into which he
could soar. The walls seemed so much higher then.
As you looked up you could just see beyond
the aluminum louvers. You could see
beyond the sky. I suppose the fireworks
had to have somewhere to go. Nowhere to go,
he didn't have the benefit of daylight.
He would float helplessly as if floating
upon rapids. In the unoccupied space,
in his looking at and into the space,
in making discoveries about himself
and his background, he was able to be
himself without the aid of documents.
From music, from the rhythm of the world
to the tinniest gestures of his body,
he had taken clever advantage of
the lucky accidents that sometimes happen
from time to time. He was unforgettable
for a time. And he was more than enough
for us: each movement was choreographed
to fill the space between us with emotion.
The stillness crept up on us while he danced.
It felt as if the surface of the earth
had fallen away. We were the earth beneath
his feet. It was in a state of wonderment
that, as she slowly took it all in, she said:
'here at last there's a lot more to look at.'
He was Burning
The last time I saw him he was burning
leaves on a bonfire in his backyard
while it rained. Even so, the leaves burnt quickly:
red, yellow and orange turned into black.
He didn’t seem to notice us as we watched
him scratch a rake across his rain-soaked pit.
The embers soon died out. For his birthday,
Dad gave him a copy of Browning’s Men
and Women. After tea, he went outside,
sat on the tree-stump where he cut kindling,
rolled-up a cigarette with his huge hands,
and smoked it. He seemed happy. Notches cut
by his axe gave him splinters in his arse.
After we’d left, my parents told me he
hadn’t much time. I wasn’t sure what they meant:
time to do what? Pop’s wife had made him smoke
outside in the rain. Perhaps pneumonia
is what killed him in the end. I’m starting
to feel the cold. My ring-finger has turned
as yellow as a page from an old book.
Poetry
Unfortunately, every single one of your pet-hates
coincided with my favourites - Rosenberg, Yeats,
Keith Douglas, Geoffrey Hill, Michael Longley. You preferred
Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes, and recommended I read
less dead-white-men. We agreed Emily Dickinson
deserved undivided attention. But Paul Celan
almost caused a riot in the hospital ward -
Michael Hamburger's translation of "Give the Word"
from Atemwende - "World-apple-sized the tear beside
you", etc - incited critical paroxysms. Your blood-
pressure soared: Not only could you not understand
the translation, what relevance to New Zealand
could such a hermetic text offer? I shouldn't have
to be second-hand. I should write into where I live.
Primary Colours
Another top-heavy goliath
lumbers down a well-trodden path.
He navigates by satellites
and shooting-stars. He deviates
from the narrow way when the signs
and portents favour the Philistines.
Heavenly bodies overhead
dictate the quantity of dead.
The bodies piled-up in mounds
are lost for words. The only sounds
within ear-shot come from a chorus
of pigeon-toed frontiersmen. No fuss
is made when clean-shaven giants
stalk the earth on behalf of clients
whom they must obey to the letter.
Tele-prompted virtual chatter
moves the proverbial mountain
with sheer force of will as wheat-grain
rots in silos. Maize rots on our behalf.
It is difficult not to laugh
ourselves sick. Sick jokes are still funny,
especially when the company
we keep messes-up the punch-line
every time. The deceased resign
themselves to the facts: a single stone
cannot fell an armoured beast. He's gone
for all money. This unmarked grave
was his last resort. A Mexican wave
ripples around the stadium
in his honour. Another grim
reminder of the price we pay
for four-wheel drive. Is this the day
when young David's whirling sling-shot
at last finds its mark? His family plot
is filled with heathens. The big bloke
laid in state, whom no one would mistake
for a confidant, a mere shadow
of his former self, never knew
what hit him. The president looks
for his glasses. A voter ticks a box.
Like the Fish Do
Do otherwise. Like the fish do,
when the day is breaking. The fish
do otherwise, pushing into
the belly of the sun. I wish
to be like the sun - I will push
and pull and push. And I shall fail -
otherwise: not yet like the fish,
nor like the sun inside the whale.
Fathers and Sons
My father promised me a sword:
but all he gave me was his word.
I'd only wished to make him proud,
to ignore the absence of just-cause
and justify my mother's loss -
to make my end more obvious.
Others act on my behalf:
in the absence of a fattened calf,
prayer is proven not enough,
as elders blessed with pure blood
must sacrifice their young to feed
another insubstantial God.
To substantiate a hollow threat
requires flesh and blood be set
against the mere approximate -
to mechanise the miracle;
to lubricate the cogs with oil;
to trigger a judicious kill;
to reciprocate good business sense.
Although we have an audience,
we note the lack of witnesses
as we march towards the Promised Land,
sifting sand from hand to hand.
Then tomorrow comes. Just like we planned.
In the theatre of tomorrow's war,
the stiffened air begins to stir -
soldiers bend their knees in prayer.
Song for a Crone -
We bleed for you:
we will beat our blood
deep
into the clay.
We will sing a song for you,
as black-cherries fall
from your withered old tree:
we will eat
the rotten fruit
and drink the sour
wine.
Crone: tell us more about
your grandmother
who made nails for a living.
Leave
the ghosts
to enjoy their obscurity.
Leave the priests to find God
among the worm-casings
and the dust -
Be definite. But give us nothing new.
Give what is old and beyond words.
Help us to forget
mammograms
and cellular phones -
offer us the after-birth of love.
Fabricate for us a beautiful,
yet painful, music.
Pain is never wholly absent.
So celebrate!
Lick your lips and eat.
This night is your night. All of it.
The darkness, the rain, the wind,
the stars and the moon.
All of it.
Like you, they have felt the agony
of love and faith
and faithlessness.
And, like you, they are old.
But your saggy breasts
and wrinkly bum are
as beautiful
as your pretty blue eyes.
Crone:
may we one day be as beautiful as you.
Where Darkness Shines
Where darkness shines for all to see,
where sameness renders impotent
the poetics of an émigré,
my strangeness remains important,
here in the margins where I haunt
you. Even newsprint cannot conceal
indifferences you choose to flaunt.
Your foster-child is orphaned still.
The witnesses of metaphor
objectify a hurricane.
A photograph of legal war
objectifies a child's pain
when plastered on an ink-stained page.
If a child's no longer happiness,
is he a mere product of language -
an uncertain sin I must confess?
Not yet unique, perhaps in time
his name will be exemplary.
Perhaps in time his burnt-out home
will no longer be our memory.
I will not write of love and hate.
I will destroy. I will create.
I will read myself between the lines.
I will dwell where darkness shines.
