States of Poetry - Poems
States of Poetry 2016 - New South Wales | 'From the Balcony: Sunday Afternoon' by David Malouf
by David Malouf •
Today in Sunday weather grevillia leaves
in turmoil, no evident breeze. A sugar hit. A honey
-eater, upside down at tilt and tumble.
The body also in Sunday mode. The mind
idling on automatic with no need
to be occupied or coloured, having come at last
to the end of a long apprenticeship in learning to leave
well alone. No empire to account to. No
account-books to square. The anxiety of nothing
in hand, nothing in prospect, set aside for
a bird in a bush, just one, warm air at play
in the windchimes; whose only news is that our missing
sea-breeze has clocked in, and from further
off, instant, astir, the air-borne voices
of children in a world all swing and seasaw.
David Malouf