Look at the fools
that love brings me
dark stretch the hollow bent
and in a glade or clearing spent
in leaps hound down a ruthless
best in this drowned in this
or these neat pools o what
are dreams or worse the solid
failing flesh of a moment
glances fled/fed it escapes me
now my hand under it
my hand to the side
my hand saying no one’s name
saying no one’s home & hoarding
bread for later its poor calls brief
occasions pass up pass out pass
on movement’s all a sprawl
a shambles in the determined
bed bleak heart you bird of
green exchanges I have done such
and such and in this fashion
fit & sparkle seize a holy other
feel it feast your gloat or boat
for bright excursions wash as wander
slowly tongue would fingers spin
to span o lover let us
Context
The rapid dapple of rain upon the tiles
which fell as though it’s been this way before and
was eager to move on to the next item
which might well have been the war
so many in the making, disintegration of
tomorrow watching from the window while I
and my brother keep our place and quiet
as the shells fall so many promises
no one meant to keep crossing our fingers
our steps and each carefully picked out
as a chain that might lead back to what
had seemed like bondage but was at least a life
and family about I’ve written you many letters
and still get no response perhaps your secretary
is keeping this from you we’re all in it together
singing in the cells singing out the hangman
part of the landscape shaking loose
and free from the common stage he floats
a while and well he may come down as we all
must and pass days by brook and fields
in the home land green land best melancholy
measure in the still fast and dark
a world for water
sometimes I can’t see clearly
this light sun of forgone conclusions drives the day
bitter pace and headlong into what never ceases
work which was punishment due our hard place
the squandered skirts of heaven
help me mother, or else they cried for water —
it’s raining and the world comes out to watch
we’re so strange and no one understands us
duller than stone than worn where feet —
is this all they do? someone singing
rarely random, piling up like evidence
a series of questions sweat tick talk
I can’t move my —
don’t you ever get tired of this
a form of defiance though clearly co-operating
in the shored up monuments their compliance
Paris for power where guns make a clean sweep
down the boulevards and the mob which is any
mob in pursuit of their demons a confusion at the gates
mine, yours, theirs, ours — say ours by wicked hours
and vivid in the streets where it’s raining
and the world comes out to watch
Bio: Geraldine McKenzie is a poet who lives
in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia. Her first book of
poetry, Duty, was published in 2001 by Paper Bark Press/ Craftsman
House.
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