Collected Poems (1958-2015) Read online

  Bound to record the damage of the years,

  You aim to tell the truth, and not to please.

  And so this other man slowly appears

  Who is not me as I would wish to be,

  But is the me that I try not to see.

  Suppose while you paint me I wrote of you

  With the same fidelity: people would say

  That not a line could possibly be true.

  Nobody’s lips in real life glow that way.

  Silk eyelashes! Is this what he’s come to?

  Your portrait, put in words, sounds like a lie,

  Minus the facts a glance would verify.

  But do we credit beauty even when

  It’s there in front of us? It stops the heart.

  The mortal clockwork has to start again,

  Ticking towards the day we fall apart,

  Before we see now all we won’t have then.

  Let’s break for lunch. What progress have we made?

  Ah yes. That’s me exactly, I’m afraid.

  Status Quo Vadis

  As any good poem is always ending,

  The fence looks best when it first needs mending.

  Weathered, it hints it will fall to pieces –

  One day, not yet, but the chance increases

  With each nail rusting and grey plank bending.

  It’s not a wonder if it never ceases.

  In beauty’s bloom you can see time burning:

  A lesson learned while your guts are churning.

  Her soft, sweet cheek shows the clear blood flowing

  Towards the day when her looks are going

  Solely to prove there is no returning

  The way they came. There’s a trade wind blowing.

  We know all this yet we love forever.

  Build her a fence and she’ll think you’re clever.

  Write her a poem that’s just beginning

  From start to finish. You’ll wind up winning

  Her heart, perhaps, but be sure you’ll never

  Hold on to the rainbow the top sets spinning.

  What top? The tin one that starts to shiver

  Already, and soon will clatter. The river

  Of colour dries up and your mother’s calling

  Your name while the ball hasn’t finished falling,

  And you miss the catch and you don’t forgive her.

  You went out smiling but you go home bawling.

  Weep all you like. Earn your bread from weeping.

  Write reams explaining there is no keeping

  The toys on loan, and proclaim their seeming

  Eternal glory is just the dreaming

  We do pretending that we aren’t sleeping –

  Your tears are stinging? They’re diamonds gleaming.

  Think of it that way and reap the splendour

  That flares reflected in the chromium fender

  Of the Chrysler parked in the concrete crescent.

  The surge is endless, the sigh incessant.

  A revelation can only tender

  Sincere regrets from the evanescent.

  Remember this when it floods your senses

  With streams of light and the glare condenses

  Into a star. It’s a star that chills you.

  Don’t fool yourself that the blaze fulfils you

  And builds your bridges and mends your fences

  Merely because of the way it thrills you –

  The breath of life is what finally kills you.

  Meteor IV at Cowes, 1913

  Sydney in spring. Tonight you dine alone.

  Walk up the Argyle Cut to Argyle Place

  And turn left at the end. In there you’ll find

  Fish at the Rocks: not just a fish-and-chip joint

  But a serious restaurant, with tablecloths

  And proper glassware. On the walls, a row

  Of photographs, all bought as a job lot

  By a decorator with a thoughtful eye:

  Big portraits of the racing yachts at Cowes

  In the last years before the First World War.

  Luxurious in black and white as deep as sepia,

  The photographs are framed in the house style

  Of Beken, the smart firm that held the franchise

  And must have had a fast boat of its own

  To catch those vivid poses out at sea:

  Swell heaving in the foreground, sky for backdrop,

  Crew lying back on tilting teak or hauling

  On white sheets like the stage-hands of a classic

  Rope-house theatre shifting brilliant scenery –

  Fresh snowfields, arctic cliffs, wash-day of titans.

  What stuns you now is the aesthetic yield:

  A mere game made completely beautiful

  By time, the winnower, whose memory

  Has taken out all but the lasting outline,

  The telling detail, the essential shadow.

  But nothing beats the lovely, schooner-rigged

  Meteor IV, so perfectly proportioned

  She doesn’t show her size until you count

  The human hieroglyphs carved on her deck

  As she heels over. Twenty-six young men

  Are present and correct below her towers

  Of canvas. At the topmost point, the apex

  Of what was once a noble way of life

  Unquestioned as the antlers in the hunting lodge,

  The Habsburg eagle flies. They let her run,

  Led by the foresail tight as a balloon,

  Full clip across the wind, under the silver sun,

  Believing they can feel this thrill for ever –

  And death, though it must come, will not come soon.

  The Carnival

  You can’t persuade the carnival to stay.

  Wish all you like, it has to go away.

  Don’t let the way it moves on get you down.

  If it stayed put, how could it come to town?

  How could there be the oompah and the thump

  Of drums, the trick dogs barking as they jump?

  The girl in pink tights and gold headache-band

  Still smiling upside down in a hand stand?

  These wonders get familiar by the last

  Night of the run. A miracle fades fast.

  You spot the pulled thread on a leotard.

  Those double somersaults don’t look so hard.

  Can’t you maintain your childish hunger? No.

  They know that in advance. They have to go,

  Not to return until they’re something new

  For anybody less blasé than you.

  The carnival, the carnival. You grieve,

  Knowing the day must come when it will leave.

  But that was why her silver slippers shone –

  Because the carnival would soon be gone.

  We Being Ghosts

  Too many of my friends are dead, and others wrecked

  By various diseases of the intellect

  Or failing body. How am I still upright?

  And even I sleep half the day, cough half the night.

  How did it come to this? How else but through

  The course of years, and what its workings do

  To wood, stone, glass and almost all the metals,

  Smouldering already in the fresh rose petals.

  Our energy deceived us. Blessed with the knack

  To get things done, we thought to get it back

  Each time we lost it, just by taking breath –

  And some of us are racing yet as we face death.

  Well, good to see you. Sorry I have to fly.

  I’m struggling with a deadline, God knows why,

  And ghosts keep interrupting. Think of me

  The way I do of you. Quite often. Constantly.

  from Nefertiti in the Flak Tower

  Signing Ceremony

  Hotel Timeo, Taormina

  The lilac peak of Etna dribbles pink,

&nb
sp; Visibly seething in the politest way.

  The shallow vodka cocktails that we sink

  Here on the terrace at the close of day

  Are spreading numb delight as they go down.

  Their syrup mirrors the way lava flows:

  It’s just a show, it might take over town,

  Sometimes the Cyclops, from his foxhole, throws

  Rocks at Ulysses. But regard the lake

  Of moonlight on the water, stretching east

  Almost to Italy. The love we make

  Tonight might be our last, but this, at least,

  Is one romantic setting, am I right?

  Cypresses draped in bougainvillea,

  The massed petunias, the soft, warm night,

  That streak of candy floss. And you, my star,

  Still walking the stone alleys with the grace

  Of forty years ago. Don’t laugh at me

  For saying dumb things. Just look at this place.

  Time was more friend to us than enemy,

  And soon enough this backdrop will go dark

  Again. The spill of neon cream will cool,

  The crater waiting years for the next spark

  Of inspiration, since the only rule

  Governing history is that it goes on:

  There is no rhythm of events, they just

  Succeed each other. Soon, we will be gone,

  And that volcano, if and when it must,

  Will flood the slope with lip-gloss brought to boil

  For other lovers who come here to spend

  One last, late, slap-up week in sun-tan oil,

  Their years together winding to an end.

  With any luck, they’ll see what we have seen:

  Not just the picture postcard, but the splash

  Of fire, and know this flowering soil has been

  Made rich by an inheritance of ash.

  Only because it’s violent to the core

  The world grows gardens. Out of earth we came,

  To earth we shall return. But first, one more

  Of these, delicious echoes of the flame

  That drives the long life all should have, yet few

  Are granted as we were. It wasn’t fair?

  Of course it wasn’t. But which of us knew,

  To start with, that the other would be there,

  One step away, for all the time it took

  To come this far and see a mountain cry

  Hot tears, as if our names, signed in the book

  Of marriage, were still burning in the sky?

  Monja Blanca

  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.

  This orchid’s sexual commerce is confined

  To flowers of her own class, and nothing less.

  And yet for humans she sends so sublime

  A sensual signal that it melts the mind.

  The hunters brave a poisoned wilderness

  To capture just a few blooms at a time,

  And even they, least sensitive of men,

  Will stand to look, and sigh, and look again,

  Dying of love for what does not love them.

  Transported to the world, her wiles inspire

  The same frustration in rich connoisseurs

  Who pay the price for nourishing the stem

  To keep the bloom fresh, as if their desire

  To live forever lived again through hers:

  But in a day she fades, though every fold

  Be duplicated in fine shades of gold.

  Only where she was born, and only for

  One creature, will she give up everything

  Simply because she is adored; and he

  Must sacrifice himself. The Minotaur,

  Ugly, exhausted, has no gifts to bring

  Except his grief. She opens utterly

  To show how she can match his tears of pain.

  He drinks her in, and she him, like the rain.

  He sees her, then, at her most beautiful,

  And he would say so, could she give him speech:

  But he must end his life there, near his prize,

  Having been chosen, half man and half bull,

  To find the heaven that we never reach

  Though seeking it forever. Nothing buys

  Or keeps a revelation that was meant

  For eyes not ours and once seen is soon spent:

  For all our sakes she should be left alone,

  Guarded by legends of how men went mad

  Merely from tasting her, of monsters who

  Died from her kiss. May this forbidden zone

  Be drawn for all time. If she ever had

  A hope to live, it lies in what we do

  To curb the longing she arouses. Let

  Her be. We are not ready for her yet,

  Because we have a mind to make her ours,

  And she belongs to nobody’s idea

  Of the divine but hers. But that we know,

  Or would, if it were not among her powers

  Always across the miles to bring us near

  To where she thrives on shadows. By her glow

  We measure darkness; by her splendour, all

  That is to come, or gone beyond recall.

  Stage Door Rocket Science

  In the early evening, before I go on in Taunton,

  I’m outside the stage door for a last gasp.

  Two spires, one Norman, share the summer sky

  With a pale frayed tissue wisp of cirrostratus

  And the moon, chipped like the milky-white glass marble

  I kept separate for a whole week and then ruined

  By using as a taw.

  I have never been here before,

  So where does this strong visual echo come from?

  Concentrate. Smoke harder. And then I get it:

  Cape Kennedy, the rocket park in the boondocks.

  A Redstone and a Jupiter stuck up

  Through clear blue air with a cloud scrap just like this one,

  And the moon in the same phase.

  The rockets, posing for the tourist’s gaze,

  Were the small-time ancestors of Saturn V,

  But so were these spires. It’s a longer story

  Than the thirty years I just felt shrink to nothing.

  Time to go in, get rigged with the lapel mike –

  Its furry bobble like a soft black marble –

  And feel the lectern shaking while I set

  Course for the Sea of Shadows.

  A Perfect Market

  ou plutost les chanter

  Recite your lines aloud, Ronsard advised,

  Or, even better, sing them. Common speech

  Held all the rhythmic measures that he prized

  In poetry. He had much more to teach,

  But first he taught that. Several poets paid

  Him heed. The odd one even made the grade,

  Building a pretty castle on the beach.

  But on the whole it’s useless to point out

  That making the thing musical is part

  Of pinning down what you are on about.

  The voice leads to the craft, the craft to art:

  All this is patent to the gifted few

  Who know, before they can, what they must do

  To make the mind a spokesman for the heart.

  As for the million others, they are blessed:

  This is their age. Their slap-dash in demand

  From all who would take fright were thought expressed

  In ways that showed a hint of being planned,

  They may say anything, in any way.
/>
  Why not? Why shouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they?

  Nothing to study, nothing to understand.

  And yet it could be that their flight from rhyme

  And reason is a technically precise

  Response to the confusion of a time

  When nothing, said once, merits hearing twice.

  It isn’t that their deafness fails to match

  The chaos. It’s the only thing they catch.

  No form, no pattern. Just the rolling dice

  Of idle talk. Always a blight before,

  It finds a place today, fulfils a need:

  As those who cannot write increase the store

  Of verses fit for those who cannot read,

  For those who can do both the field is clear

  To meet and trade their wares, the only fear

  That mutual benefit might look like greed.

  It isn’t, though. It’s just the interchange

  Of showpiece and attention that has been

  There since the cave men took pains to arrange

  Pictures of deer and bison to be seen

  To best advantage in the flickering light.

  Our luck is to sell tickets on the night

  Only to those who might know what we mean,

  And they are drawn to us by love of sound.

  In the first instance, it is how we sing

  That brings them in. No mystery more profound

  Than how a melody soars from a string

  Of syllables, and yet this much we know:

  Ronsard was right to emphasise it so,

  Even in his day. Now, it’s everything:

  The language falls apart before our eyes,

  But what it once was echoes in our ears

  As poetry, whose gathered force defies

  Even the drift of our declining years.

  A single lilting line, a single turn

  Of phrase: these always proved, at last we learn,

  Life cries for joy though it must end in tears.

  Australia Felix

  Was it twenty years ago I met that couple