872 Life poems

My doctor's packed the place for years because he's known for making huge things sometimes disappear. His routine is predictable, effortless. Pick a number, any number: he's pointing to his framed pain scale. He pauses for effect. The six second sequenced faces are a kid—time-lapsed— at a magic show gone wrong. Onstage in Vegas once, the rare white tiger snapped. Inexplicable: my numbers creeping up each week. My doctor backs out quickly, as if dragged off in some beast's jaws.

They are human after all, you think, as the waiter steps up to a table out of sight of you, reserved, corner table— they too are thin-skinned and pleasure-seeking, with their own feelings and their own sufferings. You’re not so all alone in your mess, your restlessness, your shakes, they too will be full of doubt, dither, shilly-shallying, even if it’s all about making deals, the universal-human albeit in its commercial manifestations, but present there too. Truly, the grief of hearts is ubiquitous and unending, but whether they were ever in love (outwith the awful wedded bed) burning, athirst, desert-parched for the nectar of a faraway mouth, sinking, drowning in the impossibility of a union of souls— you won’t know, nor can you ask the waiter, who’s just ringing up another bock, always avid for coupons to quench a thirst of another nature, though also deep.

Stamp the earth rind down, shuck our boots &  nap on rubber cockscomb pad. Rise up &  ride in, poles poked through with hide of   kid flap from blither wind. Ride into a town of  tires stacked, a tarred prehistoric castle. A town of shacks painted kiwi green latches guano rimmed. Road’s a batter of   blood &  dust. One serf scurries off cowed &  cloaked. Linseed-eyed &  broad of  face. Hold, I say. She says oh gods once nested on our tire hills but now that tire factory flakes to tinder too. Are you here from the world above? Now come. Heal my kin. Are you here from the world above? We douse ourselves with flame retardant &  douse the town to flame. Are you here from the world above? We hear her death in flames We hear other deaths in flames Along each town we pass We rave &  rove &  gore the last oil rig hidalgo in his tin gilt throne, His ale we drink, his heart we  jar. We are from the world above, We sing &  jig but like Sisyphus, as we eye from afar, as each child crawls out their gutted hole, &  rebuild each dead town — We can never rest.

Sometimes when you’re walking in the street, returning home or leaving to see a friend, they come. They emerge from behind pillars and trees approaching you like a pack hounding a sheep. You know it’s no use to hide or flee, so you stop and light a cigarette, waiting for them. Sometimes when you’re eating in a restaurant, your soup served and your dish not ready yet, they come. A steady hand falls upon your shoulder. You are familiar with such a hand and don’t need to turn around to meet the face. The scared diners are sneaking out, the waitress’s chin is trembling when she speaks, but you are sitting there waiting for the bill. After settling it you’ll walk out with them. Sometimes when you open your office, planning to finish an article in three hours, or read a review, but first make some tea, they come. They spring out from behind the door like ghosts welcoming a child to their lair. You don’t want to enter, seeing cups and paper on the floor. You are figuring how to send a message home. Sometimes when you have worked day and night, dog tired, and want to have a good sleep after a shower and an extra nightcap, they come. They change the color of your dream: you moan for the wounds on your body, you weep for the fates of others. Only now you dare to fight back with your hands, but a “bang” or an “ouch” brings you back to silence and sleeplessness again. See, they come.

They said to me no, don’t take any, no, don’t touch, that is burning hot. No, don’t try to touch, to hold, that weighs too much, that hurts. They said to me: Read, write. And I tried, I took up a word, but it struggled, it clucked like a frightened hen, wounded, in a cage of black straw, spotted with old traces of   blood. Translated from the French

They travel in threes, usually in station waggons or utes, often have dogs, and eat out of cans in country motels, always the one on the edge of town – near the truckstop with good hamburgers – I remember the Isis Motel in Guyra They drive old cars, or horses made of wind, whose manes are streamers of wind. They tend to wear black. I have met them as young as fourteen – Beck’s friend Kristin had written her autobiography already, it was called ‘These Days’ but it was stuck in her computer somewhere, in the shed at her mother’s. Her mother and the girlfriend, they were also storm spirits. They taught swimming and they were kind at first, often charming After watching the birds’ mating rituals on the forest floor at the bottom of the steep train, under the speckled trees, we decide to go north. We borrow Beck’s sister Jade’s car, and Alecto gets her licence first go. We hear the Sibyl is staying at the Isis Motel. This time there’s no bush festival, no whip-plaiter, the pumpkins from the scarecrow bellies have all been eaten in baked dinners cooked for the Lamb and Potato Festival. That will be fifty-three dollars. The others shower and go to bed, I’m as usual awake. At night across the road, five types of frogs set up their orchestra, and the Mother of Ducks lagoon throbs around the gazebo – tree frogs like the ones at home chaka-chaka, chaka-chaka I go out and unroll my sleeping bag on the picnic table suspended over the lagoon, and watch the sun come up over the railway line. In the distance across a golf course, I see smoke and walking I come to a woman in black near a tent. The Cumaean Sibyl, I presume? I say. She laughs in her mantle, invites me in. – So you’ve left the infernal regions too, I say and she laughs again, going out and poking kindling under the damp logs. I notice a laptop on her sleeping-bag. She’s written a book about birds in New England which she shows me. No one reads it, she says, except ornithologists. She’s now writing a manual for editors. When she goes out to the fire I look at her hand-written page ‘Parts of a publication: sections and paras, signposts and transitions, running heads and feet.’ Any news from home? I ask. The singer is failing to get his wife back, she says. The ferry man batted him back with an oar. I prophecy he’ll be torn to pieces, she says, and offers to cook me some kidney. Where are your sisters? she asks. I say they’re at the motel. Well, they won’t be getting kidney, she says. Our New England holiday over, and no other prophecies from the Sibyl, we’re drive south through the Moonbi Hills and down past the Emirates’ horse stud at Murrurrundi through bull-dozed mountains the Sibyl says you once went round, past the cones of a giant power station and the sign: Muswellbrook – City of Power. And on to the Newcastle freeway. Back in Sydney at the hostel, the girl at the front desk leans forward: Have we heard? About Beck? She’s sorry, Beck has been killed in a car accident near Bulahdelah. Automatically I touch my dreads and groan.

I am not saying “mark my words,” as the thief says early each winter. He leaves nothing of value. He too wants. A brute with language, he has a fondness for preaching. I am bathed to luster. Memories move musically through my bones. He sings above, vaults off a horse with feigned kindness, lands so fancy. Letting go of this, sitting with tropical leaves the size of men in a terrarium, I am beautiful. He means well, admonishing women. He is lucky with the show of crankiness. What does it mean to let go the envy? I sometimes hope stars don’t spread themselves over New York’s lights. Performing for himself, glasses glittering, he reads stories of poverty, claims them all as his own. Here in Colorado irises of all colors unfold outwards to the half-hidden sun. On the cracked cement, chilly before rain, I see perpetual beginnings. I’m going to forget him: lock him in a box in my head, lock him in the haunt of violins, let go what’s his in the hurl of breath of my groans.

A man stood in the laurel tree Adjusting his hands and feet to the boughs. He said, “Today I was breaking stones On a mountain road in Asia, When suddenly I had a vision Of mankind, like grass and flowers, The same over all the earth. We forgave each other; we gave ourselves Wholly over to words. And straightway I was released And sprang through an open gate.” I said, “Into a meadow?” He said, “I am impervious to irony. I thank you for the word ... I am standing in a sunlit meadow. Know that everything your senses reject Springs up in the spiritual world.” I said, “Our scientists have another opinion. They say, you are merely phenomena.” He said, “Over here they will be angels Singing, Holy holy be His Name! And also, it works in reverse. Things which to us in the pure state are mysterious, Are your simplest articles of household use— A chair, a dish, and meaner even than these, The very latest inventions. Machines are the animals of the Americans— Tell me about machines.” I said, “I have suspected The Mixmaster knows more than I do, The air conditioner is the better poet. My right front tire is as bald as Odysseus— How much it must have suffered! Then, as things have a third substance Which is obscure to both our senses, Let there be a perpetual coming and going Between your house and mine.”

What happened is, we grew lonely living among the things, so we gave the clock a face, the chair a back, the table four stout legs which will never suffer fatigue. We fitted our shoes with tongues as smooth as our own and hung tongues inside bells so we could listen to their emotional language, and because we loved graceful profiles the pitcher received a lip, the bottle a long, slender neck. Even what was beyond us was recast in our image; we gave the country a heart, the storm an eye, the cave a mouth so we could pass into safety.

(Written by Martial) My friend, the things that do attain The happy life be these, I find: The riches left, not got with pain, The fruitful ground; the quiet mind; The equal friend; no grudge, no strife; No charge of rule nor governance; Without disease the healthy life; The household of continuance; The mean diet, no dainty fare; True wisdom joined with simpleness; The night discharged of all care, Where wine the wit may not oppress; The faithful wife, without debate; Such sleeps as may beguile the night: Content thyself with thine estate, Neither wish death, nor fear his might.