Castaly : Poems, 1973-77 9781775585220

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Castaly poems 7973-7977

Ian Wedde cover drawing by Jeffrey Harris

Auckland University Press Oxford University Press

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS to: Climate, Hasard, Islands, New Zealand Listener, Literary Half Yearly, New Poetry, Poetry New Zealand, Pilgrims, Radio New Zealand, Tarn Tarn. Pathway to the Sea is republished from the individual Hawk Press edition of 1975 done in collaboration with Ralph Hotere. Don't Listen is republished from the 'Hawkeye' pamphlet from Hawk Press. Shaduf was given to the composer Dorothy Buchanan for her use and is now gratefully recovered for publication in a slightly altered form. This book is published with the assistance of the New Zealand Literary Fund © Ian Wedde 1980 First published 1980 Set in Optima by Computype Services Ltd, Wellington Printed at the University of Auckland Bindery Typography and design by Alan Loney ISBN 019 647987 8

The poems in this book represent my attempts to remain alert in the world between 1973 and 1977. The most recent of them was written at least three years before this note. Nevertheless my main obsessions (sometimes called 'themes') have remained the same, though not habitual I hope. They are few, and if they don't come across in these poems, well, I did the best I could. (That's all I'm telling.) Last night I hadsa comical dream in which all the typists from the typing pool of a large insurance company hurled their typewriters down the lift-shaft of the building. This odd vision is what I have to get on with now, it's still mine, whereas the poems in this book belong (with thanks) to whoever cares to read them. (I suspect the dream offered a metaphor for wasted emotions. I recognise another voice which says, 'Nothing is wasted'...

14/8/79

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CONTENT This literary craft of mine, in its native model and rig, goes out laden with the facts of the strange happenings on a home afloat. Her constructor, a sailor for many years, could have put a whole cargo of salt, so to speak, in the little packet; but would not so wantonly intrude on this domain of longshore navigators. Could the author and constructor but box-haul, club-haul, tops'l-haul, and catharpin like the briny sailors of the strand, ah me! — and hope to be forgiven! Be the current against us, what matters it? Be it in our favour, we are carried hence, to what place or for what purpose? Our plan of the whole voyage is so insignificant that it matters little, maybe, whither we go, for the 'grace of a day' is the same! Is it not a recognition of this which makes the old sailor happy, though in the storm; and hopeful even on a plank in mid-ocean? Surely it is this! for the spiritual beauty of the sea, absorbing man's soul, permits of no infidels on its boundless expanse. Captain Joshua Slocum I became more and more excited about how words which were the words that made whatever I looked at look like itself were not the words that had in them any quality of description. Gertrude Stein Say to the Court it glowes, and shines like rotten wood Sir Walter Ralegh

Saw civil servants, green with mildew, keeping Their huge manure contraption on the move So badly paid for bullying and creeping I really hope their salaries improve. Bertold Brecht every cell comes to this: you are beautiful: you are just beautiful: beautiful: thank you

A.R. Ammons

I wanted to hurt him, but the memory of the night was ugly in my mind. There had to be a difference between me and the opposition, or I'd have to take the mirror out of my bathroom. It was the only mirror in the house, and I needed it for shaving. Ross Macdonald

Louisiana Red was the way they related to one another, oppressed one another, maimed and murdered one another, carving one another while above their heads, fifty thousand feet, billionaires flew in custom-made jet planes equipped with saunas tennis courts swimming pools discotheques and meeting rooms decorated like a Merv Griffin set. Ishmael Reed

How can I go back to dreamin when reality's become heaven. Oh roses bloomin' the afternoon, shadows on oriental rugs — rich phonograph records, rings rose wines oh, belles — dreaming in the afternoon purchasing value out of nowhere bring me back to paradise: lohn Wieners

Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive Trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive Jackson Browne

Well, it's a matter of continuity. Most people's lives have ups and downs that are relatively gradual, a sinuous curve with first derivatives at every point. They're the ones who never get struck by lightning. No real idea of cataclysm at all. But the ones who do get hit experience a singular point, a discontinuity in the curve of life — do you know what the time rate of change is at a cusp? Infinity, that's what! A-and right across the point, it's minus infinity! How's that for sudden change, eh? Infinite miles per hour changing to the same speed in reverse, all in the gnat's ass or red cunt hair of the A t across the point. That's getting hit by lightning, folks. Thomas Pynchon

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LYRIC 1 dross He asked her for a token she sang plaisirs d'amour not another word was spoken ah how he longed for more And when his heart had broken she sang plaisirs d'amour she kept the heart for a token and then she wept full sore

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GRIT The sun's arc censored daily its drift veering north: mountain valley plantation outcrop wintering interstices sodden with light, shadows foundering in amber afternoon: as if these waves which just keep on arriving at the beach were staking out claims as if this stinking wrack meant adventure as if the child swung above the sand between the young man & the young woman were about to fly ... At night, knocking grit from the child's shoe the young man thinks: I've no ambition these pure gifts erode me, each day bright as water in a brass bowl: refractions whose edges cut me back till I slip over the borders of seasons mountain valley plantation outcrop no longer fixed but fluid as light is, no longer an eye but a gaze, no longer searching but sought through ... But tapping the small load of grit into the palm of one hand he stands in the back yard in darkness feeling the grit's weight once more press him against what, being sought, exists.

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PATHWAY TO THE SEA to A.R. Ammons

I started late summer-before-last digging for a field-tile drain at the bottom of the garden where below topsoil that leached away as fast as I mulched & fed it was a puggy clay slick turning rainwater frost dew snow sparrowpiss & other seepage & drainage down under an old shed in the lower adjoining section: here the water bogged foundations & floorboards till the whole crazy edifice began to settle sideways & slide on greased clay downward taking a fouldrain with it: visions of 'faecal matter' bubbling up from clogged overflow traps bothered me & some others too: it was time

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to act! especially since in addition to ordure getting spread around & putting its soft mouths in deep cloacal kisses to our livers any obvious breakdown in the system for disposal of this shit (our shit) would bring the council inspectors round like flies aptly, & that would mean they'd get to look at other aspects of how we choose to live which might strike them as unorthodox or even illegal: for example there's lots being done round here with demolition timber, & that's illegal, you gotta use new timber, citizen, the old stuff which was once forests of kauri & totara & rimú took oh hundreds of years to get to where it was when it was milled, the house it knit together stood & withstood 'better' than the forests I suppose: the timber served, anyway, it did that for whoever watched the process through, & now that the houses're out

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of phase much as the forests once were, though like the forests the fibre of the brittle timber can still spring & ring ... anyhow, now it's time to go, it has to be stamped down, splintered by a dozer's tracks & what's left of fibre knot & resin has a match put to it: its goes 'up in smoke' — but round here we hoard the stuff & use it, it easily bends nails, it splits & you belt your thumb often enough to know all about that but the structures stay put! & the inspectors would say 'Down with them' — well, down with them!... I like the way you have to compromise with brittle demolition timber: what gets built has bent the builder as well as his nails & nerves: he's learnt something about service, the toughness of the medium may have taught him that ease is no grateful index to dispensability or availability: like who wants a companion for life or whatever span

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you fancy (they're all 'for life') who can't put some juice back in your systems? — ah how you value the tough lover who keeps you up to the mark, whose head eyes language hands loins engage you, give you elevation, a prospect, with whom you ride up the up & up like birds beating on in the mutual updraughts of each other's wings — birds, a subject I'll come back to later when I'm through with this drain: what needs to be noted here, though, is that even if some things don't fight back at once or obviously, you can still bet your 'sweet' (for) 'life' they fight back all right & your children & children's children will be paying your blood-money, citizen — well, meanwhile, we agreed, let's keep our shit out of the public eye & let's keep our friendly sheds, our lovely slums, our righteous brittle screwy inspired constructs up: & then let's add some flourishes, decoration in this kind

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of setting doesn't coddle anyone, least of all the chickens who coop's included in the drainage problem threatening to overwhelm us all: besides, we'll all benefit: chickens with dry feet lay more eggs because they're happy: happiness as a concept may be about as brittle as demolition timber when the latter's traced back to its forest & the former to its causes, but it serves likewise, it teaches us 'for life': if you're for life you're for its crazy outhouses, the corners of happiness that don't square: right, there were lots of reasons, the practical & the ¡deal didn't separate out, the forests & the brittle planks were one, we were engaged, we wanted to convert our drainage problem, transform it, transubstantiate it, assume it into the causes of our happiness & the happiness of our chickens whose wet feet & poor laying rates rebuked us daily — we picked up shovels, backed off somewhat,

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then we started digging fast, we went at it, we went down four feet & then two more, there was all kinds of trash, bottles & old sofa springs & broken masonry & bricks & unusual quantities of bones dating from a previous owner who'd bred dogs, Dobermans (-men?) I heard, then we began to get into the clay pug, we were out of sight by now, the shovels hove into view at rare intervals, shaken by buried handlers to loose the sticky glup: a comic & as time went by popular spectacle: for those down in the drain the strain began to tell: some quit, some hid, some developed rheums blisters & trenchfoot, streptococci swarmed upon their tonsils, they pissed chills straight from the kidney (it was now winter, autumn had dallied by among the easy wreckage of an earlier level) they defected, deserted, they offered their apologies, they fucked off, the practical & the ideal

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sprang apart like warping unseasoned timber, boiiiinnggggg ... a sound, I thought, not unlike a drop on a long rope: what deserters got once, & I found myself wishing it on them again as I plied my lone shovel, bucket, grout, mattock, axe & spade, baling out the boggy trench as the 'drainage problem' halted right there, hacking through roots (that deep!) shoring up avalanching walls (the drain — huh! — was by now fifty yards long & in some places twelve feet deep! impressive even if left at that) & shaving out gummy scoops of clay which grunting I then flicked heavenward into the blue icy sky or alternatively into the sky the low colour of clay: clay anyway, clay & more clay, the gobs landed up there pretty randomly after a while, & sometimes they got washed down again by the late winter

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rain, heavy rain, which the roots of trees were sucking at, sap beginning to rise in them, refreshed by those surface-feeding tendrils, those deep tap-roots, & it's here the story really starts: not that what's been said so far's irrelevant, though I apologise for its disorderly development & the large number of seeming non-sequiturs — things do follow I assure you, they proceed, citizen, they practically hunt you down, & me, who've just been enjoying the way these lines unfold, much more easily than how the pug & clodded marl left that drain, landing up there out of sight & almost burying one of three baby fruit trees (we're here) which therefore didn't get its tiny branches cut back before the sap rose in them as spring came on gravely, gaily, with me still down there in the trench still chucking the odd clod up & still

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covering that pear tree: finally a retaining wall got built (use was made of used materials) & then a truck came with field tiles & another with shingle & we got together some used roofing-iron & we had a drain! Yeah! there was enough fall in it to get 'the problem' drainage away & out of our way, the chickens basked & laid, the clammy surfaces of seeping banks dried up, the rotting structures with their feet in clay delayed their inevitable demise, miasmal damps & soaks breathed out their last stinks of mould & fungus, artesian cheeps & kisses of surfacing wet were drowned in birdsong, when the sun shone it dried & when the rain fell it ran away the way we wanted: it was summer, the leaf uncrinkled from the bud blossom fell, fruit spurs plumped out, sap circulated with its natural zest, & one small pear tree, unpruned, went

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crazy! was a mares-nest of wild growth, capillary maze of shoots & tangled twigs gobbling the provisions of root & leaf, starch & water, sweet open sandwiches of rotted stackbottom & whatnot, bonbons & snacks broken & tasted by those bon-vivants the earthworms: the whole gusty catering-service served that tree whose clusters congested & grew together with ungainly health while nearby the other two grew straight sturdy & slim, sunlight entered their hearts, they reached up heavenwards: 'benighted' is a word we should have the use of more often: oh pear tree! in that condition you'd never score a single shriveled product: well come autumn I cut you back till there was almost nothing left: the lesson is, effort's got to be directed ... yeah, I heard they wanted to build an

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ALUMINIUM SMELTER at Aramoana, the sea-gate, & someone's bound to direct more effort that way soon: listen, there's birds out there, we're back with those lovers, the buoyancy & updraught of some kind of mutual understanding of what service is, of the fact that a thing being easy doesn't make it available or passive: listen, effort's got to be right directed, that's all, the catering's amazing, everything proceeds, citizen, sometimes it's hard work, but you're engaged, you want to keep practical & ideal together, you're for life, you know that happiness has to do with yes drains & that nature like a pear tree must be served before it'll serve you, you don't want your children's children paying your bloodmoney, citizen, you're for a different sort of continuity, you want to live the way you want to, you want to keep

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your structures up, you want elevation, you're ready to do your share, you'll dig your fielddrain & you'll keep your shit out of the water supply: you want to serve & to be left alone to serve & be served, understanding tough materials, marl & old timber, the rich claggy rind of the world where dinosaurs once were kings: well they're gone now though they survived longer than we have yet, but then we know, don't we, citizen, that there's nowhere to defect to, & that living in the universe doesn't leave you any place to chuck stuff off of.

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CARDRONA VALLEY 'Grown men'

those kids pissing into a clay bank. All for love of that preterite beaten thin as air by the centuries. The badeyed steer stales like a busted conduit. The river gobbles rocks. The commonage didn't last either. After rain the mushrooms come snouting up each one the hardon of a buried miner dreaming what his dirt will buy. Mouth of dark spaces the valley waits for the mountain.

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POWER CUT The youthful promise of electricity! flip a switch & the burrow thickens with woodsmoke, the fire laps up air, the curve of her instep rubs his calf. Near dawn the child creeps into bed: wet wool peesmell, tender sinews of neck, small-animal snuffle. It's another day, night drains down those wires, time leaks past the silent turbines.

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SPRING BOUQUET haste haste good friend come soon information saturated with leaves turning, turning the bifurcated leaf-spurs of elder folding out, above this the blue 'cerulean' & high puffs of cirrus trotting like 'home from school': it breaks my heart & trees into leaf, blossom & my son into language love love I miss you more than I can say on this spring day

acid here comes the 'window cleaner' zzishh! there's nothing like sunshine thru the grimy panes of the mind's mansion where it lights on 'Battleships of the World' or 'Tales of Mystery and Imagination': capricious interior, bright exterior but an equal radiance for spring eyes broadleaf kapuka's to look at good enough to eat but I don't: licking instead spring sunshine off it with my eyes' eyes

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bargain at this remove or that there he sat: it was spring & he'd settle for it coro//a I can really dig distance the way it pours away at the horizon on a day like today & the feeling of it folding back up behind me: through 360° or whichever way I turn it's happening so that the firmament's getting pushed up all around like the corolla of a blue flower in spring oboy! sweet honey-bee kissing the lips of rankest weeds In springtime in springtime': oboy!

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AFTER BLAKE the bowman & the spirit of inspiration: how he glares aghast as his own hair stirs leonine, a mane, & the weapon scorches his hand stretched out to fondle to bump his knuckles down the tender spine of Enitharmon Kneeling holding a breast in each hand & lifting the teats his way, her pudenda bare as a child's 'Come, my liquors are set in store no man's ever tasted my breath ...' his haft-arm shakes the singing bow-string burns his cheek

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LYRIC 2 the answer Leave for a while that 'grand theme' the certainties of the questions. Here are the aches of the answers. This is the clutter where love lives that irresolute solution. Here are the trembling mouth the shining eyes. Here are the difficult exiles of the facts.

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THE FIRST DAYS the first days: autumn, winter, spring, summer: you step out & you know them, you dip cold water to your face have a spit over the edge of the yard, you eat an egg, drink the coffee hot as you can, you say When're you gonna stop? you hear yourself say Didn't know Td started, sonny. 'Good morning/ 'Good morning/ Gef fo if.

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BEAUTIFUL POULTRY Slipped it under a mothering hen while she slept, thought she might not turn it out & next morning her brood was larger by one which one, 'my one', who knew: survival's anonymous & ungrateful & we need more than that, we need Beauty, Mandelstam's 'plain carpenter's fierce rule of eye', intuitive alignments with the Infinite, oh boy! we say, this egg's so beautiful! & we gild it, it's exquisite. It has a dead chicken inside.

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CASTALY

1

Captain's share Three Officers divide Six boat-steerers divide Twenty crew divide Owners & overhead Hail & beware ...

2 ... putting out upon the fat water the Carey's Bay boat l'Avenir newly painted ... bright blue! O cloudy towers obscuring the sealanes

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16/240 14/240 18/240 40/240 152/240

shelter the Acheron shelter the Anna-Lee shelter Miss Otago & Koromiko shelter Kutere shelter the Capri & l'Avenir

& r Avenir ...

3 Purple moils from the north The coal hills The dark convections The vault above the sea/ & l'Avenir going out in a dead calm under a corridor of blue! How the heart leaps at each new departure! The dark spout lifts it from beneath lofts it high into the blue. Castaly: 'the fount of poesy' Down there the little boat bisects the whole ocean with its wake. That way Santiago. That way Antarctica.

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4 It was like when she disembarking wore the pearl-grey travelling costume I saw the sea today & her hand lay a moment on my thigh, indicating slipping between Goat Island & Quarantine where the old wood fever hospital weathers pearl-grey like a wraith what? like a wraith on its own tides

slipping

5 Possums whisk into the bush wekas cross over like daft hens our car doesn't have their number on it. Some others have. 'Lotsa traffic here tonight/ 'Yeah/ (6 cars) The ruptured gut —bags gleam phosphorescent. 'Can you dig the odds?' The Pacific glides in here like a ghost ship: ruffled moonlit sails, bow-wash on the beach. Now hear the generous spirits murmur: '... taedium vitae: more work, less play forget it, friend: we're back from the great continent of the dead. Let the feast begin. Your sacrilege has mounted up, it's time to feed us .. /

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6 ... m/s-en-scène: body of water body of mammal body of death the envelope of atmosphere drawn out in tides meniscus of ocean drawn out in tides water of body drawn out in tides . . . .

7 In 1827 John Guard blew into the Straits. There were black headlands white water. The rocks opened. They ran through Tory Channel beached at Te Awaiti: a miracle ... he climbed the hill another miracle: as far 'as the eye could see' whales & whales & whales cows & calves sporting the spouts feathery in the breeze . Casta/y: 'the fount of poesy'... was he moved to tears?

8 The first year they took only baleen Later business looked up The sea ran with blood. Dead whale calves brought cows in.

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The secret sang in Hobart Town. Sydney merchants dug their hands in their pockets: arrack-rum, slops, biscuit, salt-meat, tobacco, tackle, & 'trading stuffs'. In '32 Guard bought Kakapo Bay 1 large cask tobacco 5 pieces of print 10 oxen 8 iron pots Rangihaeata & Te Rauparaha got 20 blankets each. The Ngaitahu under Taiaroa kept raiding from the South burning Guard's outfit.

9 His number one headsman was Joseph Thorns ('Geordie Bolts'): he went gallid every bone fluke-broken. Number two was Dicky Barrett ('Tiki Párete'): in 1840 he opened Barrett's in Port Nicholson. Number three was Jimmy Jackson of Jackson's Bay: the Rev Ironside had a righteous welcome. & others ... Jacky Love ('Haki Rau'): when he died the people gave him a chieftain's burial canoe dug in beside him.

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10 In Te Awaiti, Kakapo Bay, Jackson's Bay, Cloudy Bay the fleet stood gunwale by gunwale. You couldn't piss down the breeze & miss a Starbuck. By the time the surly chiefs came up from the south to sign the treaty in Port Underwood the 'fish' were scarce ... Hobart Town hired mad crews Sydney flicked its abacus.

11 Wakefield had been & gone wearing white duck trousers. Dieffenbach had been & gone. Marsden had been & gone aboard the war sloop Rattlesnake. Dicky Barrett was cutting his arrack with water, turpentine, bluestone. Haki Rau's prow rotted. Piri, Haraheke, E'Tori, rotted. Sufficient capital had sailed into Wellington. James Heberley was the pilot he remembered limbs strewn like driftwood on the beach at Te Awaiti by the victors from Kapiti. Forbidden history. Te Rauparaha, gone Rangihaeata, gone The whales gone

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12

In 1958 they got a few off Te Await i with TNT & diesel chasers.

13 Last year when the tides drew back at Te Awaiti Kakapo Jackson's Cloudy there were still some bones. Bishop Jonah ex cathedra: 'It's time to feed us.' Flounder sweep the nave Butterfish fly through the cusps. 14

body of water body of mammal body of death no Castaly spouts in the Straits a songfest heard from Santiago to Antarctica the whole Pacific their playground l'Avenir putting out upon the fat water newly painted . bright blue ...

the tides plucking at your mind the dark spout the fount

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CHILD SLEEPING

Hingehn will ich To be gone is my wish Friedrich Hölderlin

to be led out to leap to sail to have the song carry me 'away': no part ruling whole nor moment, time: no talk about the weather while the earth shakes to be quit of the will to this solipsoid optics! our age's illness ... Ah Hölderlin there was Susette your 'Diotima' you saw her, you saw her, till your eyes burned back in your head: carcinogen, your brain cauterized, poems like caustic iron & such sweetness such sweetness ... singing at night 'At midnight

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wild, invisible creatures teem/ And when, above, the ever-joyful/ Blossoms, the flowering stars are gleaming/ .. /

to be led out, to have the poem 'carry me away' dear Hölderlin ... how terrible the child sleeping: to be so small & asleep, sailing back into the dark: to be left for so long alone...

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DARK WOOD 1

The phrase goes on growing in my head a tree fixing its roots in me: 'in the middle of the journey of articulated

our life'

logging trucks hit low gear down the main road. masts of those hills riding at anchor on their strata,Compactions of generations: the food of the living whose tissues I hear tearing before the bright saw. the masthead tipping, the earth-sea shaking at the fall: a swath mown through the fleet: a thousand of them skilfully 'taken out': a tithe of what I think is beautiful a commingling of elements though another forest once grew there/ but this usurping dark wood where no birds live, where the footfall's also silent in the sour detritus, siftings

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upon sittings & a sea smell, piercing, cloacal. where fungi grow like rotten coral from the sea-bed/ but this dark wood 's a seeming, a symbol, whose mystery. whose mastery I enter whose masts whose airy corruptions I enter & am lost in 2

: as a man might be lost in that space where the battered hull's held tenderly against the wharf-buffers where the same deep redolence rises where the same light sifts & the logs swing over. the iron tackle clangs, the chains are loosed. The logs drop to their allotted place. They will cross the Ocean of Conrad's dark heart. They will be whittled into matchsticks masts.

& sent back. little mysteries, to light your fire.

3 If you know anything you line the grain up & strike to the side.

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I get short ends from the wharf for winter. I saw them up. Then I split them & stack them. The bright blade breaks the grain the timber cracks breathe its sea-gasp. Stacked, a spring tide. the dark shed sails in a reek of pitch

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airy fragrance of destruction. the wood burns bright & quick, the ash goes back to earth the gas to air. A handful a breath of what the tree fed on. 4

If you know anything. in -spiration: whatever comes out at last & must be purified again. I split Language to make poems burn. to have beauty usurp beauty. comminglings of elements, the broken ends of tithes of airy masts split/ lit by little mysteries. a handful a breath of what the dark wood took.

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ANGEL & this ¡s where you get off, Angel, that tender miracle your child's foot treads the glass shard doesn't feel a thing till it hits bone it goes in so clean. & this is where you get off, Angel. Hey, & across there where the ozone blows down from the north & then blows back again from the south 'in one ear & out the other' your own sentences coming back at you backwards off the windy Straits off the snowy shoulders of Tapuae Uenuku: a shrug, who cares? clouds as heavy as a drink of water — hey, across there's Mt Crawford. The millionaire embezzler plays 500 for cigarettes there. That's where you get off Angel. That's where your sentence comes back at you. You cheap bastard. This is where you never listen. This is where the cloud you drink's so heavy it rams you into the dirt you never had on your hands Angel. This is where you get off

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oh Angel child here's where your miraculous glass foot slashes the beach. Down to the bone where it hurts. This is your beach-head right here right here Angel. One step back & you're off & there's nothing behind you but what you came from the bitter waters you rode in on ah they filled your nostrils then Angel like an offshore breeze in spring yes gorse-flower & jasmine, something rare like that. Look Angel it's all flowing quietly one way: the waves the tide the currents the wind & that moonlight flowing with it silk on a woman's thigh & you want to flow with it too dontcha only you keep cutting across the stream on that weird diagonal through the flow — hey Angel where'd you learn those tricks, vaulting the bonnets of fast cars, getting back against the rip, & such? Look, you make so much

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trouble for yourself, why not hang in the swell? find the grain? learn to follow the steps? Listen Angel, the starry dynamo's gota rhythm, all you have to do's listen, be still be still & hear it, it goes tick tock tick lock. Why throw the switch, Angel, why try to walk on moonlit water, why each time you touch a moonlit woman do your fingers have to screech like teacher's chalk?

Ah Angel listening to Mozart you imagine a single note stitched through everything a golden filament in the cosmic fabric unravelling a string looping out of the dark heart of the Abattoir you can't find it. Angel stop fighting it. Priest Amadeus will thread you. Hang you like a star about the throat of Lady Zodiac. 'Fancy meeting you here' Angel. What still tipping it back? Wow lookit those

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liver bags man one under each eye fat slugs gobbling your salad days leaving those trails on your cheeks. What are you a poet? I know I know it's my sense of humour. What next Angel? You sashay out the illuminated time/weather sign sez 10.15 FINE spray's drifting over the esplanade as you walk home. Drink some of that Angel you'll void like the old captain cut his rum with brine & turpentine. You'll laugh like Dicky Barrett, Angel you'll sing like a whale. You scratch a hole in the sand, take a shit in the shadow of the art-deco band rotunda. Hopripe turds, little grit in your grundies. Take a look, look there Angel: what's coming at you? What does it all mean? 'I, uh...' Look out there, what's that, could be some kinda precipitate, drifting veils in the water? could be mud? could be offal? could be a whole

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city's shit? Stop dreaming Angel it ain't for sure plankton. It ain't whale food. There's no Castaly spout breaks the salt rim now Angel. No sea like crisp tequila. No 'fount of poesy'. Get it straight. Why're folk so down on you? Because you're slick Angel like dog shit under their shoe

soles.

Angel the only one you're fooling is yourself. They'd like to sluice you down that concrete fundament bleeding amoebic sepia out in the brilliant morning where Pacific blackbacks fight & crash the tarnished silver screaming More!

More! More!

Clarity, Angel, The Tin Cup Dream, 2 spotless workshirts a diet of vegetables a vista of snow or ocean. Make that snow. 'Up in the mountains' you wouldn't hear a thing the hawk would hang in the bright air your thoughts would loft like that. Down here the cries of mariners come through the window-

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cracks. Stuff the cracks they still get in sunken bells knocking at the brink of the land-shelf. Listen to them, Angel.

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KALI YUGA Time passes 'like a fart in a carnival'. Wind & cold cinder. Fire gutted the uppers & fanned back off the basement. A life's work was there but fortune walked on by & freedom too. There was a 200° vista of harbour & dolphins were stitching the blue. Responsibilities drift through the dream lattice, the tide scrapes black paint. Get off you have no fare. This is the last trip up. Carry your sleeping children half way across the dark city home past where a little rain is tamping the ashes. Time to dance on the ashes time to stamp them down hard & get your shelter up there where you will sit in it & sing to keep warm, kali yuga holding your hands out to the music of the fire.

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SHADUF When that star fell in the desert the dry socket brimmed with water. The well looked at the heavens they entered its dark surface they shone there. 'Starwater. starwater... Our cup brims over in the dust!' Be what you see. And a tender stubble of green spread around the crater. Now this is where you pause on your journey. This is the place you return to in your rage: to bathe your eyes in starlight drink brackish tears sit in the cool of these outlandish trees whose names you'll never know seeds dropped by some caravan lost in eternity. They waited for the water to spring here kissing their husks open. Hello. Good morning. It was not a dream you dreamt..

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THREE LITTLE SONGS FOR PROSERPINE QUEEN Tip up ice in a cold bianco lemon & mint late sunstripe at the kitchen door dutiful statements with their thumb in their arse & no scratchmarks no silence at the grate. Cool rainwater through a culvert white horses in the harbour. Around & around & around again. Where knowledge stops & the mystery slips down & the wind 'springs up': a freshet at the tongue's root growing into silence the quickest part of us. Make love with it, catch ice & lemon & go out in disguise where the Dominoes rise in elevators to the top floor. They drop their masks & eat flesh oh flesh! in darkness I count myself out. Laughing a lot these days. *

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the full the full moon the full cigarette packet is next to the darkeyed moth while half the empty teacup catches lamplight, lamplight & so much order! Valves open & shut yellow typhus water the moon, the moon! Cloud smokes heaven's glass, elsewhere in the house friends make bad music happily. Detail seems to be my way out, which is where I do so like to be.

* That afternoon I finished the cool drink quickly & got up heart pounding. You can spit time off dandelions at six feet. Phoo! I had purpose but no plan & soon it was night. Ten nine eight seven flowing to silence wet scratched & out of it. One day maybe I'll understand these jokes that make me laugh.

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LYRICS lookit ... white stallion in the hill paddock . . . dark plantation, yellow sky ... Yes friend you're feeling old & your lady's off with some other fool but lookit that iron come down & those bites in the turf! Lookit that old white stallion!

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THE 1976 BULLET McHALE WINTER LECTURES 7 The Style Here is moonlight on the sea like' yellow tallow on a mirror. Here is a dressing room for Stars a fin-de-siècle Funambules. Here is Pierrot. Here is the moon again. Here is the romantic idiocy of the word like': the key in so many languages for example to a roman à clef (in which you feature as a style). .

2 The Metaphor A part of me wants to live in some anonymous hotel room: to be surviving for no purpose without roots. I like airports, to be desolate & independent, to be taking off! suspended while the world turns: to be in transit while others are collecting their baggage: to be passing through & to see beyond the window & my reflection a foreign tree, blazing fruit, faces. Pay the bill. Pick up the bag. Take the bus to the terminal.

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3 The Poet The leaves they all fly down, the clouds blow one way, & the sea! did you ever pick up on such concord... try crossing the street cars jammed into town like coins in a jukebox ... Oh let the song be neither short nor long, let it recall another time & other company. She is dying your mark on her eyelids on her lips bright with music: (she says) 'Why did you cross the road? The city

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has made me deaf. You have made me blind. I heard you stop the flow with your stride. I saw you were crossing

to me. Now I hear nothing. I do not see you. I do not wish to live/ Your delicate heart quivers in the tide of your body it points up-current the very universe pours past its gills. It is a view you are looking at a vista of the harbour you applaud, its surface is surely flowing. What does this mean? It is not like a street you must cross. You are going to praise the vista in a poem. She will step out upon its surface & drown. That is what

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the song is about. That is your banal destiny. That is what it all 'means' my friend. 4 The Rhythm Look at the man. He enters the water & sets his brow to Santiago. Phosphorescence crackles in his ears: his lover 'spitting sparks'. & that's it, Jack. 'Getting back into the swim.' The Resource Ramble. Later he takes a lift to the top floor. The Pride wants to know why he sucks locusts. He's no hunter. At the party someone else is leading his feet through the Resource Ramble: 'a chooga loo (two-three)' He isn't making it.

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5 The Singular Definite Article In this final lecture I prophesy that those who place high premiums on being cool & sexy will age grotesquely. Time will suck the yellow fibre of their loveliest flower. All right, 6 of those who go 'back' to avenge the sensory deprivations of their 'best years' many will return to go to the movies, give head by streetlight in a car on Oriental Parade, for recreation ride a white horse south to hear the scree rattle as the snow slips down: yes, it's too late now to learn a trade & turn right. It's too late to turn back. Going sideways doesn't feel like getting ahead but you haven't got the talent for that anyway. So here you are tapdancing on your modest accomplishment until it rattles, 'marking time' as they say, & I'm sorry, I don't want to end on such a down note, it goes against my nature, but there doesn't seem to be a key in here to unlock the electric light room door out to where the birds are that you can hear drinking the yellow kowhai, singing & singing in the real world.

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LYRIC 4

skydiver How fortunate to 'make' love & fall asleep in bed at night without having your life jam in there too & drive you out afterwards into that very late sunlight where you have to hurry along some street speak words you made up all by yourself & all the latest news.

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DON'T LISTEN 1

Well here we are where we are and what are we going to do to make a living out of life? I'm not about to hang the ding an sich on you my origins lean that way but they have a tilt towards other borders and anyway I'm here it doesn't really matter the thing is: when you rise above your specific condition and take a peek around you see we're all being fucked 'around' 2

Ah Saturdays! I love you like the life I'm living for a living when I have some time to set down the things that are 'on' my mind: there is a football game I want to listen to in about half an hour 'my head hurts' like a silly training moving (but I like it) there is music coming out of the next room it shakes up my consciousness, and it looks as though the weather may clear for Sunday so what is it that I want to say this Saturday. This poem

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is for the commonwealth heads of state meeting in London, they won't read it or hear it but that's okay it's almost why it's getting written people are always trying to tell them things because they don't listen. Or should that be but. Who cares, they are not going to change the world any more than I am optimistic as I am, full of 'promise' young and in good shape (you're bidding joy? I'll raise you luck and see you) it's not like underpants or a lifestyle or your mind those things you have to change often to show yourself you're not stiff yet. I see Muldoon standing stiffly at the window of a large hotel on Hyde Park he holds a glass of champagne in his hand his barbered neck is turned to the empty room and that haircut didn't cost a dollar next to the Turf Digest and the Park Royal. He's watching summer run away from him into trees whose leaves have become curiosities tinkering with the heart of London. The game is on and boy! the crowd loves Grant Batty his intelligence his heart that makes up for the size of his body as the commentator says and we are winning! For a moment he imagines running down there and into the trees also

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but then the image blurs he's leaned too close and fogged the pane with his champagne breath, because when you get too close. Should that be but. 'Would you hear my voice come through the music' comes through with the music the weather is still clearing he has another glass anyway but the room stays just as empty or, because the room stays just as empty. On the mist he draws a globe down there a couple of islands summer is still running west and won't stop for a long time yet and in Wellington harbour the wind has come up from the west with a smell of summer about three months off you could almost forget it was midwinter because the wind fills the sails of a two-master and waltzes her past Mount Crawford Prison. Should that be but. Ah

why talk about the weather when the world shakes to be changed. The ice of 'the times' is not in the air it could be summer today or at least spring in which Grant Batty confronts the foe with his amazing heart if it didn't feel so cold inside, there the wind with its rumour of summer can't reach from the unreal leafy heart of London where Muldoon stands like a lonely child you can't feel sorry for either.

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He is not going to change the world for the better any more than Batty or me and he is not going to listen to you because when you get too close the pane blurs and in the mist that's come down upon you he signs another laundry cheque. In his position it's easy to keep some things at bay so he lifts his lonely glass saluting summer's lovely nape as she runs away and the west wind sails a white yacht past the prison on the promise that she's coming back some day 'would you hear my voice' Batty is setting them up again, does that make you feel better and warmer inside? Some rimes sound just like double column accounting and mean about as much. Next time you lean ctose citizen, he may rub you out because he likes the view a whole lot better than he likes you

3 A scent of honey came over the water

it was light on the clothes and hair of people it was the air they exhaled as they passed me in streets where rain had left its lucent sheen turning a blue clarity from the edges of ordinary cornices winter boughs in small parks. It must have come from the islands of the blessed. Then where are we. The air was there to breathe and I did. Inspiration: whatever comes out at last and must be purified again: that scent

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of honey, I don't have to be grateful for that nor for the ground I reel about on. If I start counting small blessings I will end up thanking whoever believes he has some franchise on them and he also breathes, the honey light falls on his hair and clothes what comes out of him must be purified again before we'll say that inspiration sweetens his right to make us whisper thank you, thank you, Robert Muldoon. The honey light falls also on his hair and clothes and whom does he thank, what moves him to change step in a morning crowd catch his reflection in a shop window and smile back?

4 At night when the wind drops and the sky's clear I see Venus climbing into the moon's lap I hear the earth breathing like a sleeping parent I see houselights winking down there at Petone. In Newtown children with coldsores were hustling lunch money I didn't have the franchise thank you, thank you, they said. Don't listen to this poem, that's why it's getting written.

5 Oh Grant Batty you have a big heart summer's coming you can see her breath

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through the music

the white yacht waltzes to. Muldoon's franchise doesn't feed those kids. You ding and I'll sich. Fuck him. Who needs the little prick.

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SOMNAMBULIST Good luck. Our dreams chase us through days and we hear everything. Until dawn breaks we watch how they can see in the dark. Then they fall asleep & we go out. Family pet rolls her red eye she skids on the domestic nap into her pack dream. So thick you could just curl up on it right now among all those sounds you grab at once before you stop listening & start running in the dark, in the dark where there are no obstacles and good luck is after you like nostalgia.

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CHOPHOUSE LOG 1

It's hard being on a diet when you're hungry & thin. On the 7th floor of a building you talk to an expert. You want to do your best by your friends and he has your future in his hands which don't even tremble. How are you going to make yourself feel worth it? Get your tone right. Try relaxing into your dream of the last chance to buy the winning ticket where the ordeal is of motion & silence & the prize to stop & hear music played for your life.

2 There is the vista the street going down in cold sunlight music playing out of shop doorways blue sky the ocean at the end of the street & water springing at the stone. Now the lights are on down there where the ships come in. Upstairs at the end of the street where everything stops Hope is walking the boards she's taking it off for the block table from Massey College. What do you think you have built on stone light music sky ocean you decide. Right now.

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3 The seat of your pants is falling out. How do you expect to get your responsibilities together when you haven't got your dream straight? Brother, if they don't arrest you for taking off the shelf, they'll despise you for picking up from the floor.

4 bird flies out of the tree & back again rain drips past the window your jaw drops. The effort of holding up the sky! One day you'll just wake up & start. 'High definition performance' high octane fuel! Chicken Man blowing hope out his arse lavender vapourtrail in the stratosphere.

5 filth tilth wealth I wonder where I'm at the rooms will be so empty time will be pounding on the roof in five years the twenty seasons will have stripped us we will depreciate into some kind of pleasure

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baked eggplants bursting their skins a lamb turning above slow coals. Alternatively we will appreciate somewhere else, I mean the values. The city will be grinding them up like words between your teeth pushing paste between a baby's lips. Eat! Talk! Kiss!

* Leave me alone

* en plein air

* I am practising for a trip away.

* In this corner of the garden melancholy somnambulism smell of herbs crushed underfoot thin blue smoke through the aromatic air

6 Beauty lies down among the kitchen slops protein massacre to entertain her prince who likes her smile

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so much he gives her tips certain she's caught his style: 'Come with me to the New Hebrides'. No need for conversation. Wash regular & smile. Beauty lies down among the kitchen slops & hates him in her heart who needs her dreams to decorate the house he leaves to come 'out' to eat each nite among the protein glamour & the presentation the strangers who also pick her from between their teeth.

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BAD BREATH This time the windows are dark and the light shines into your eyes oh little sun! O you poets where has the world gone? what do we reward you for now your eloquent failure to free the bird that taps and sings inside your head rattles its little mirror and bell cracks the seeds from which you steal words? I see you understand that. And what else. Throw a cloth over the cage lie down to dream in a room that fills up with your last breath.

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THE AIR YOU BREATHE Wind saves this town. They take your breath away, the clouds & the sea cooling your face for kisses. Sad browed lady, the air you breathe has crossed the sea for you & your man is waiting, his clenched heart losing its grip on the fare. When the lights go out you will be in heaven smiling for no one to see, the breath of the world's lovers will approach your face. How should I tell you that I think you are right. When the full moon is held up for you tonight take a look at your reflection. Behind you the stars will be hanging in spaces you know about but never see, your stone smile will be lighting up the dirty squid boats dancing at your door. Being happy means not forgetting what you know. If that makes you sad, you will still be strong. The air you breathe will still have come that far.

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JOSEPH CONRAD EYES Yes I see that you certainly are waiting for the man with the Joseph Conrad eyes, his lips drip salt and he's drifting in some pure sensation 'thinking of nothing' only that should read 'not thinking of anything': see how the clouds are stacked up above the Rimutakas: soon it will be dark but they'll be there. If ideas were clouds 'nothing' would be one. If he were not thinking then it would be night & the sky would be waiting to open again, Joseph Conrad blue, like those eyes. Life is short and you know plenty about these things, so why do you say 'thinking of nothing' when what you are waiting for is to be real because he's woken up & seen you.

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LYRICS happy people Happy people, spare a thought for the man with no friends, for the childless woman embracing her sister's children. Young lovers, spare a thought for the embittered old wondering how they wasted their time. And you old ones who did what you wanted to, spare a thought for the happy young who don't know where to start.

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES

1 Sitting in Eric Geiringer's waiting room studying the Apocalypse in Newsweek Sitting at home wishing the house could fly (it happened to Judy Garland) Sitting here in Wellington fanning the stink of hogwash from my nostrils You're going: that follows me around digging pits for my heart to fall into. Sitting in this trap of sadness I think of you highstepping over cracks down the yellow brick road to where all the bright newsmen go looking for the end of the world.

2 Oh we know the tricks. We are pulp fiction. Our pride resembles indifference our indifference resembles a style which we have in common. That makes us products & we're supposed to be free. By farewell I mean: Farewell.

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3

Here there's some furniture to push against the doors some stains to wipe off the windows & space requiring mercy. Some nails to straighten before I can start building some conversations to complete before I get back to introductions & these farewells to consider before I can spring my heart from its darbies & take a walk around Oriental Bay leaving some slack in the leash.

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INDEX After Blake 29 Angel 45 Bad Breath 73 Beautiful Poultry 32 Cardrona Valley 25 Castaly 33 Child Sleeping 40 Chophouse Log 69 Dark Wood 42 Don't Listen 62 Grit 72 Joseph Conrad Eyes 75 Kali Yuga 57 Lyric 1 (dross) 77 Lyric 2 (the answer) 30 Lyric 3 (lookit) 55 Lyric 4 (skydiver) 67 Lyric 5 (happy people) 76 Pathway to the Sea 13 Power Cut 26 Shaduf 52 Signs of the Times 77 Somnambulist 68 Spring Bouquet 27 The Air You Breathe 74 The First Days 37 The 1976 Bullet McHale Winter Lectures 56 Three Little Songs for Proserpine Queen 53

Also by Ian Wedde Homage to Matisse. Amphedesma, London, 1971. Selected Poems of Mahmoud Darwish (trans.). Carcanet, U.K., 1973 Made Over. Stephen Chan, Auckland, 1974. Pathway to the Sea. Hawk Press, Taylors Mistake, 1975. Earthly, Sonnets for Carlos. Amphedesma, Akaroa, 1975 Dick Seddon's Great Dive (novel). Islands, Auckland, 1976 Spells for Coming Out. Auckland/Oxford University Presses, 1977 Poetry in the Auckland University Press List An Incorrigible Music Allen Curnow Orchids Hummingbirds and Other Poems Kevin Ireland Inscription on a Paper Dart M.K. Joseph Shorter Poems 7963-77 Alan Loney The Firewheel Tree Keith Sinclair The Seal in the Dolphin Pool Kendrick Smithyman Dwarf with a Billiard Cue Kendrick Smithyman Crossing the Bar C.K. Stead