Poem

The world, the tranquil punctual gyroscope,
Is more or less at peace after her fashion,
Broad bowels work, creatures rejoice or mope,

the west coast of irish light
is inside everything and through everything
like the washing on the line, the pegs
the sky, the wind, this window, and your hands, your eyes

I could say hello to things.
Theodore Roethke

i.
The hand’s wave,
when it comes –

Too hot and humid to do more than drowse
And slip – who knows how brief the interims? –
Into a chafed unconsciousness,

I

Patiently, ticket by ticket, a soft-stepped crowd
advances into the mimic ship’s hull half-
sailed out of the foyer wall, as if advancing into
somebody else’s dream –

What am I? A crushed hominid.
A can of couscous, seeding.
A shudder of my former self, a
self-defrosting fridge. Good

For months Mozart has been so crucial I haven’t played him.
The winds, filibustering the house, have heard
the chimney crackle and the paint strain
while the old obsessions went ignored. What was the point?

Bairnsdale
The sky is starling-filled granite, this open country
veneered with estates sudden as dark water rising. Main Street
clusters with pensioners

I had just walked out of the reeds at the confluence
of two rivers. Brown frogs stuck in my hair like gouts
of flung mud, my skin was whip-stitched, lacerated
with leeches. I was walking a path hazardous