Poem
Only the young can wholeheartedly love ancient music.
It is fancy-dress, sound pared to its bones
As if the naughty flesh were simply the prop
for the idea of fabulous costumes, or sackcloth and ashes
Such as we never dream of today.
On Little Bourke Street it’s the bewitching hour
of winter dusk’s last riffs playing
long mauve shadows down the blocks,
waking the neon calligraphy, its quavering script
mirrored on the warm sheen of the Noodle King
where a man slaps and pummels the dough
into a pliant wad. He takes a fist-sized ball
and starts his noodle magic, stretching the bands,
the sleight-of-hand plain for you to see,
weaving a stave of floury silent music.
The wild White Nun, rarest and loveliest
Of all her kind, takes form in the green shade
Deep in the forest. Streams of filtered light
Are tapped, distilled, and lavishly expressed
As petals. Her sweet hunger is displayed
By the labellum, set for bees in flight
To land on. In her well, the viscin gleams:
Mesmeric nectar, sticky stuff of dreams.
Saturday. The usual 9 a.m. flight.
The man beside me hefts a Gladstone.
‘I haven’t seen one of those in years,’
I say, this being sociable Saturday.
I recall a worn one from my twenties
owned by someone else. Always empty
A doctor with a face
worn and grey as his cardigan
calls my name
in his rooms
he asks about the book I’m reading
I tell him
... (read more)
So much activity outside
where sunlight spills across the snow
like cream –
Rain bubble-wrapping the windows. Rain
falling as though someone ran a blade down the spines
of fish setting those tiny backbones free. Rain
with its squinting glance, rain
And the world is fire.
And the sky wears a smoky veil.
And the bloodshot sun stares.
... (read more)‘Addio, valle di pianti’ –
These the composer’s plainchant words
No librettist dare rewrite
At using up imprisoned air
To sing like miners’ warning birds
Inside the sunless atmosphere
Of Eros and eternal night,
Amneris concertante.
... (read more)the gardens dyed silver. finally he was
less keen like an eaten bird, it wasnt my thing
the path diverged off course to a camp.
you were willing to grow a pomegranate inside.
here they were gods people with their quiet domestics,
the redheads were nicer however. the pram, was full with a baby,
‘dreaming’ of white museums. & white art.
... (read more)