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GRAFTON BRIDGE  HOSPITAL  MOUNTAIN VALLEY  ɽ��  THE STREET I SEE FROM MY WINDOW  TRAVELLING WITH THE STARS  THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW 


GRAFTON BRIDGE

as you cross    the cemetery beneath the bridge closes in
pinetrees raise suspicious faces
an ocean of the dead    like iron, giving off a fishy smell
the rusty sunlight has passed by
sniffs at you like an old dog
a dog staring    the scene is particularly clear from the bridge

a sky shrivelled by extinct volcanoes    a dark red fist
a drop of the past��s blood on a low-budget headstone
clouds    merge into yesterday��s storm
and are fouled by the claws of birds

transparent windows opened    by the balustrade you brought home
you cross the bridge at home
an entire city lodged in a sickroom
green weeds linking so many feet together
under a stone roof the stone master closes in
in an iron corridor the iron master closes in
fantasizing with the eyes    death need not speed up
that end where you go away and turn old
the dead on the lawn looking down at you    are all the same
distance away

but you have to come back    as though fettered by handcuffs of glass
to overhaul every pier of today��s sins
a child running crazy among snow-white seagulls
standing suddenly still    crying loudly for the stars
with a pain abruptly extended in the night    bitterly weeping


note: Grafton Bridge, Auckland, NZ. Known locally as ��Suicide Bridge��. 

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HOSPITAL

the lid closes    whether or not your face is hammered full of nails
spittle, as much as in a lifetime of humiliation,
long since bleached out this light, easy death

a hand can��t reach its own pain
the darkness of this night    stands altogether outside events
you rent four flimsy walls

listen to the river flowing inside a paper carton
between bones left blank    listen to the storm
wait for the next patient

as another tear flies into your eye
a shrill shout    collides with the shining glass
becomes a cheer    you��re ruthlessly driving the nails in

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MOUNTAIN VALLEY

as we come to darkness    on the valley floor we see light
rocks    deep as the sky
suddenly snap like a dangerous staircase
timid fingers bent toward the violent stars weep
turn us into cripples
or deceive our eyes

when light becomes a creature    we are dead
these tiny squirming bodies
drill holes into us    shining
moonlight falling as though spreadeagled
a city lying on a bed overgrown with illusion
reading a dark book    its cover the ocean
its back    the sound of wild animals�� hooves on mud
pitfalls    when you think of it, are always underfoot
once distance has vanished    we touch a bright red rivulet
wrinkled with stones    exhibiting every terror that ever was


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THE STREET I SEE FROM MY WINDOW

on the street I see from my window it never rains
it lies by my windowsill
composed and calm as a comb
waiting    for a silent woman
flying in from shore like a tired seagull
hands hugging herself as tight as a pebble
on her back    in a furry grey satchel
a lemon quietly changing shape

the street I see from my window is white with snow
all winter    on the street only
seven stray cats and a man sleeping in an abandoned car
or eight identical pairs of eyes
empty husks, utterly free of resentment
so affectionate I am convinced
they have promised to feed each other with their corpses
and, like a guarantee    the gentlest of touching

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TRAVELLING WITH THE STARS

at either end of the refugee horizon    the stars
a crystal tempest in time with you
half the sky like harvested fields
you are a grain of corn    grinding in the mill
you scan the scene    the way that enemies yearn for each other
a man walking through a century in time with the stars
drinking water on that seashore
hearing that drum    beating from the forehead to the back of the brain
stabbing skin    chiselling bones one by one into silvery white
looking at the stars you too begin to float
floating inside yourself
time differences    decaying along with the body
only in starlight does the golden ocean disclose its flesh-eating processes
half the sky the depth of remaining life
falls
you are the other half that is chosen
when you can��t help shining you can��t help falling apart

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THE NON-PERSONAL SNOW

1

the snowfall is arid����rushed����imitates the enthusiasm of a person
brutish, dusky daylight
snow walks along the treetops with tiny claws

tiny skeletons
skeletons of glass refined by fierce fire

snow����always stops
the moment it's still grating on the ear

as for death����what can the dead still remember?
a body secretly sprinkled all silver
a thousand pregnant women giving birth in the sky
cold orphans still not given permission
a pink ladder of flesh����leads to a tiny attic
a tiny attic of white night����where corpses are kept

you don't exist����so all year round you are snow-capped

2

the snowy ground is covered with blind men����they can't see
the poem that died in the hotel
and����the valleys that breed the fearsome sunlight

below the same precipices they lose their shadows
become thin black needles on the garden sundial
wash their feet in laughter

take pains to carve patterned vessels from a dead bird
drink deep at picnic time of the scarlet stream
noon����the scarlet stream exuded by blind eyes

they can't see����the tourists in the poem
lying naked in hotel beds
no need to fall����to get to the depths of an avalanche

3

a little clay lamp����is your present to darkness
in the clashing together of the sounds of the rain
the snow in your name is born
snow that engrains your body
pain����releases flocks of birds shut up in stones for years
each one a word����and you are wordless
the storm����is a cemetery in the air above city roofs
angels too����in the nest must lick their wounds
like golden-headed beasts kneeling on the olden days
a person revealed by water just has to follow the current
a snowfall is like music that goes down to death
you, when a name dies every day
expose a body that no-one can caress
let the sky feel
from snow to blood����feel all over the flame
until darkness����pays back some unknown person's time

4

night like a madman's thoughts����knocks
on our skulls����making us encounter
dangerous snow from a non-existent distance
like horses racing past a single peak beneath two stars
with the pricking of a nail buried in the summer night
hear ghosts laying the dust����sweeping the moon
hear����headstones tell lies����flaunt the arts of living

we are all snow����slipping downhill
innately non-personal and so squandering each person's death
night on the sickbed����squanders vain hopes
as the village of madmen strums away
candles are undying����bells sprinkle tears
on mountains and in fields white bones take off the mourning dress of our days
and����we are frozen into one complete stone

5

this mountain valley can't be visited
just like inside you����that attic of white night

when you're invited by the snow����flowers and plants are a silence
field of vision����like a glass of wine poured into darkness
burning in other places

when you're turned down by the snow����you are colourless
a hawk roosting in a wound����softly weeping sunlight
rock����slowly swallows you
and your sex shines with a brilliance impossible after death

when you have become the only impossibility
a lifetime's snows have already fallen

in the attic of white night����forceps tightly pinch
in the fragile dreams of birds����the sky cheers heartlessly
sweet pears on girls' breasts����fall into
the rainy season ����the sound of rain����chases you all over your insides
an utterly naked man is only a snowflake

spotless white underfoot in the valley����glaring

a walk of a thousand years still hasn't crossed this room you aren't in

6

those who live in time know time isn't time
a rock is itself a poem
and shadow ����engraved as a seat by a lake
weeds every June ����read aloud here
snow ����the silver-white book of the dead
and the brush of steel wire and coir is still stubbornly sweeping

a pair of muddy shoes of coffin wood
a set of paper handcuffs����make the convict more terrified yet
these words����go wrong when written down
words carved on cliffs����ride on a runaway cable car
broken apart day after day
poets who leap into a poem deserve only to be broken apart

in an imagination more lifelike than death
snow is a once-only walk����once and once only
June rots in chorus����as the bodies of the dead ring bells
all men����are ringing solitary bells that are fulfilled in this moment
dying more lifelike than in imagination
snow ����has gone too far����can't help burying everything

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