NO PANE NO GAIN

Last week when I returned
I found my desk
covered in dust
family photos dispersed
other documents damaged:
(no prof should have an empty desk).
I had been away
and wondered if colleagues
had enacted a cremation
scattering my ashes
with a light but disorganising touch.

 

So four weeks is all it takes, I mused,
to incinerate the idea
of me, my work,
my modelling clay, my canvas.
Then through my jet-lag
I saw a pane was missing
from my window. Robbery
on the second floor?
But when I looked outside
I saw it dead and broken
on the ground.

 

So much for my paranoia,
but at my age when time
runs backwards towards dependency,
when the diminished locust in me
seeks its spent chrysalis
as a refuge,
anything is possible.

 

Well it’s not, actually –
and that’s the problem.

TIPPING POINT

Large cappuccino please.
Quatre dollars the barista replies:
this is Le Grand Café
on Clarence at Alliance Française.

 

When transferring coins from pocket
two slipped.  Bien attraper!!
the barista smiles. They do not
hit the floor nor are they in my hand. 

 

My custom is this: order morning coffee
then to the loo while it brews.
When I open my fly two coins fall
into the bowl, glint with a watery smile. 

 

Who knows where money has been
my mother said, urging me to wash my hands
before eating after touching coins –
and certain other things. 

 

Back in the café my coffee beckons,
Christmas decorations on the lights and wall –
goodwill in tinsel; the season of gifts –  
today I leave a two-coin tip. 

PROGNOSIS

It was his unsteadiness of gait
his slurred baby words
as though a drunken man
had taught him
that gave the game away.

 

Only two, and the scans
were far worse:
secondaries in his spine
liver and nodes

and then the sardonic pathology
that marked our entry
to the land of astrocytoma.

 

We visited foreign cultures
continents of chemo
surgical islands
archipelagos of different doses
and duration of radiation.
Stage 4 the doctor declared
so he'd be dead
within a year.

In such a perished
and abominable land
it’s only chance that sees him

still alive at nine.
But each time he gets a cold
it's my brain not his that melts
and the sun goes out
and I walk with a wobble
across a floor of fear
as he did seven years ago.

LIBERATION

Today I leave Afghanistan,
its grievous wounds, missiles,
shouted orders, charges,
deceits and betrayals, drones,
its impassive Buddhist monuments
with torn-off limbs and bullet-pocked faces,
poisonous and exhilarating poppies,
deserts and mined mountain places.

 

But not all bad and never dull.
Paradoxically I never felt imprisoned
by the captivity of war.
There's always a way
to soak with excitement
in another's flesh.

 

 

 

 

Usually we only show a third:
two-thirds of our selves are locked
in our personal Guantanamos
until war or crime or illness
changes the game and society's gates
are blasted open
and for one brief shining hour
we are truly free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SO LET US CULTIVATE THE GARDEN

Of all philosophers in Turkey
the Dervish was
by all accounts the best.
So, weary of their disputations
Pangloss and Candide sought him out:
“Reverend father, why so strange an animal
as man was made?”

 

“With what meddlest thou?”
the Dervish replied.
“What signifies it
whether there be evil
or there be good?
When his highness sends
a ship to Egypt,
does he trouble his head
whether the mice on board
are at their ease or not?”

“What then must we do?”
asked Pangloss. “I had hoped
to reason with you
about causes and effects,
the best of all possible worlds,
the origin of evil,
the nature of the soul,
of pre-established harmony.” 

Whereupon the Dervish said,
“Hold your tongue.”
and slammed the door
shut in their faces.



BEEF IS THE ANSWER

You may be wondering where lies truth:
the noise you hear upon your roof
is not hail, but a cattle hoof.

A cow has tried to cross the moon
but found out painfully and soon
that such attempts all lead to ruin. 

Mad cow – yes – a dread disease;
nothing to put the bull at ease
naught to strengthen failing knees. 

Yet in life’s existential puzzle
when Hunter red you choose to guzzle
and eat his flesh and gravy suzzle. 

Just gobble up and don’t feel down:
don’t let his footprint make you frown;
his methane’s hot, it has been shown.

But beef’s the answer, of that I’m sure:
to keep in place the global poor –
enhance the rich a little more.

THE PERMATEMP CUBE CAMP

 

 

'This is where I work,' he said,
waving an arm in a circle of sad
as though he’d just missed the bus.
'All these cubicles with their little pictures

and could-be contents
of my wife's handbag –
photos of kids and grandkids,
trinkets and confectionery,
lovers and Lotto tickets.

 

'I know a few workers by name,
but lots come from other countries
and only half drink coffee.
The young woman who sits here
had breast cancer
last year and two kids:
so we sent flowers
for her chemo.’ 

'And friends?' I asked,
'Friends?' he smiled, surprised.
'No: this is just the place
where each day
we all concentrate till five.’

 



COMING OF AGE

Your death date is but six years off.
If I live, on that day
we shall be united
by our common age. 

What will it be like
to wake that morning knowing
that this day was your last?

I would like to chat,
compare notes, to see
if you had clues to wisdom
picked up along the way
that I had overlooked.

In return, there would be
little I had learned
that you did not know -
the recapitulating errors, twists,
entwining turns of your life
comprise one strand of
the double helix
that then codes mine.

FATHER’S DAY

 

Twenty-five years of city traffic
have passed this bus stop since
and yet there you are – impossibly so –
your familiar hair and heavy
framed spectacles, chubby stance
that increasingly I approximate,
chatting as was your habit to a group
of three in tutorial diminished thirds
and easy vocabulary.

 

Logic says you've gone
so if it’s you
then logic’s at wit’s end.
If it's you what was our mourning for,
our ritual farewells,
contested will and testament,
the packing and pitching, the selling
the thanking, the struggle to set course
by an orphan’s compass?

What have you been doing?

 

 

 

 

 

AN OBSERVATORY REVIEWS PIER PILINGS IN CASCO BAY

The Portland Observatory was built in 1807 to ‘view the bay's horizon to hearken the arrival of ships in order to call workers to the docks to unload supplies and operate fish processing plants’.

Pilings:

Present ARMS.

Oh: I see you have no arms

military or muscular -

excuse my mordant humour: limbs

lost in the tempest of ‘12

or ‘28 or the fire

of ’40?  Perhaps

I overestimate your age.

At EASE:

We’ve both known decay:

I may outlast you

but eventually my feet of stone

will survive no better than

yours of Appalachian lumber.

Mark me: we will all fall

impotent in the final storm.

ENOUGH:

We do not talk much, you and I.

I suppose it’s our preoccupation

with our survival as we age.

But we belong together

in common time and place.

Yes. That we converse

at all is a satisfactory miracle.

BLESSING

After a scene in Gilead, a novel by Marilynne Robinson

                                       

I was walking from my neighbour's farm

one early autumn afternoon – 

practising mindfulness –  

and I turned in hope

that a retrospective glance

might show me a detail,

a fresh fragment 

of meaning for my journey.

The road was cool and clean:

behind me in the distance

were two young lovers.

The man turned, smiled

and pulled a branch

that overhung the road

and as his partner walked beneath

he let it go and so it sprang,

chilling her with remnant droplets

of the morning rain. 

Her shower was a baptismal blessing.

I had set out searching

for a renewed appointment

for my soul and found

in their liveliness,

in the happiness of her face,

refreshment, grace.

NIGHT WATCH

0230 MYT* March 8^th 2014

Something’s wrong:

we should be heading north

but by my reckoning we’re south-west.

I have a good sense of direction

from my years of sailing.

For an hour we’ve seen no lights of land:

the cabin staff have disappeared.

0430

Our direction has not changed

for the past two hours.

Passengers are restless,

hungry, thirsty;

no news from the cockpit:

are we on autopilot?

0530

I think a silent catastrophe

has overtaken us. 

I’m writing these thoughts

on my phone, and soon

I’ll seal it

in a strong container

I carry on flights

for fear.

0630

I wandered

towards the cockpit:

agitation is growing.

Knocking on the cockpit door

elicits no response:

it’s like the chest of a man

whose heart has stopped.

0700 MYT

I fear for the children:

their parents try to reassure them

but there’s a limit to stories,

an end to lies.

0800 MYT

Sunrise. I hope against hope

that my calculation’s wrong:

we will soon be out of fuel

thousands of miles from land.

0817 MYT

I’ll finish now and seal my phone –

my personal black box –

I am frightened now.

*Malaysian time

DINNER PARTY

Last night we had our friends for dinner -

Janette’s looking slightly thinner.

Harry always was a sinner

and could never be a winner.

Jason made a zehr hot curry

served with rice: a fiery slurry.

He’d used he said in foolish hurry

five times too much: so very sorry.

We sat outside in shorts and sneakers

and then discussed asylum seekers.

Mozzies zoomed and found our bodies

Undiscriminating – they’re not foodies.

We ate dessert and went inside

our tummies full.  You can’t deride

our good intentions but I could’ve cried.

We washed up. Zero impact worldwide.

THE MAGIC OF WORDS

FIRST AND FITTEST

There would have been a tear

and pain and blood –

and fear: the firstborn is always a worry.

Two-fifty thousand women die this way

each year: two-fifty thousand neonates

of tetanus from dung on the cord.

Lord.  So many dreams end in death …

And how would they have washed him

or was he swaddled covered in the cream

that saved his skin in the water-world?

Survival of the fittest

but for what?

The breast for now

but the astrologers

who read his star

brought myrrh

knowing cross and manger

to be cut from the same wood.