No more the deathly sleet in famished mouths;
No more the bloom of cannon,
The shrapnel whimpered flesh,
The crack of bones.
No more the pink dither
On their Prince’s lips.
Alzheimers: Greta
Not seven steps from the familiar geography of her room
her bewilderment sagged on her walking frame
as she shied away from the stern arm
that was guiding her.
She cried, ‘Where are you taking me?’
in the fretting voice of a sleepy child;
and I stooped to look for her roseate smile
and saw instead, in the unerring vacancy of her face,
the scattered particulars of her life.
The Cathedral at Reims
In the front of the great assertion that is Reims,
one Angel smiles.
He is Gabriel, delicately boned, familiar,
he has turned towards the Virgin
who stands in her long solemnity,
amongst the sober prophets,
and the proper saints.
Cautionary tales
For naughty children at the Zoo
Barnaby Bibble
Barnaby Bibble snuffled and spewed
Cigarette smoke which caused a bad feud
With his parents and cousins and closest friend Trevor
Who had vowed not to smoke forever and ever.
At the age of nine Bibble was fully equipped
With Nicotine rings and filter-tipped lips,
And the billowing smoke was such a tirade
That calls were sent out to the Fire-Brigade.
He made a mistake, though, by smoking too close
To a Bison named Tyson who grew quite morose,
And fretted and fussed and generally rutted,
Till in sad desperation poor Bibble he butted.
Ensemble of strings
The Melbourne recital centre November 2012
Melodiously, in maple, spruce and ebony
The honeyed sap is rising:
A secret gravity of wise accumulations,
A throb of music gestating in the wood.
And so, gorged with notation,
In a glance they begin,
And their minds extend, abduct
And flex,
Arched exactly
To the curvature of the earth.
The Gate
In many parts of Africa people must pay bribes to be able to work, sometimes several bribes. There is always a gate-keeper.
Each day amongst the shanty lives
trading must begin anew
for earth-space, water, fire and work
[for now, at least, the brownish air is free]
Four poems about Francis of Assisi
1. Sistered by Death
For some there are vanities that rise up as rags,
And declare their holy poverty to the world;
For others, language is a dazzling vestment
Worn close to the skin;
But you, Francis, kept your words and your poverty
At a sacred distance, so that in each dawn,
You could rise like a swimmer
And breach the water afresh,
Hair bubbling with curls.
Ibis
The Wetlands at Laverton
See the Wetlands where the Ibis roost-
Adjacent to the railway track-
Each rookery is a Lilliput
Where a single upright bird might stand
As tall as any Gulliver
In the quiet parishes of reeds.
When Ibis move
They do so in rosters of fastidious steps
Each bird as polite as a grandad
Who is looking for the salt.
Japanese Paintings
Here, the air is buffeted by kites,
the tug of carp, the blossom’s kiss,
Waves of fire coil through a paralysis of storm,
and the song of the Samurai
is whetted sweetly
in arcs of chosen light.
Le Jardin des Plantes
1. Snow Leopard
Soundless as snow
the leopard comes,
all of his weight
is in the gold of his predatory eyes.
He comes down from
the bright mountains
with the musk of deer,
the scent of ice,
the grazing breath
of the high, prodigious goats
meticulously held
in the perfume of his face.