Judith Beveridge
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Judith Beveridge was born in London in 1956 but has lived in Sydney since she was three. Jurisdiction matters, because Australia is understandably proud to claim, for its own, a poet of such distinction. The larger truth, however, is that her unusually exact registration of nature is inspired not just by Australia but by the world entire. Quite apart from its unfailing dignity of movement and quiet splendour of analytical diction, what I find daunting in her poetry is how it examines in microscopic detail the order of natural event that I usually fail to notice at all. To anyone for whom a spider web is just something that gets tangled in your hair, and all the wild-fowl on the beach are merely different shapes making different noises, here is a lavish reminder that human beings are only one of the creatures in the biosphere, and perhaps not even the most interesting; although they definitely write the best poetry. Judith Beveridge has won so many prizes that I don't propose to list them, but one prize is too rare to be glossed over, or, by other poets, to be easily forgiven: her first book, The Domesticity of Giraffes (1987), was reprinted three times. The ten poems here are taken from that collection and its two successors, Accidental Grace (1996) and Wolf Notes (2003)
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The River
Today herons don't fly but stalk with jurisprudence;
and there's a line of retreating water where they put
their beak- and step-marks. I watch them go forward,
then reconfigure each step. Here, no cadence lifts
them through a tightening sky; but they seem to
watch the scansion lines fish make when they mouth
the surface. Today, no bird need transpose its steps
into an over-solicitous reach, or find a current through
their feet. It is enough to watch a river widen with
loose and silent evidence of a strenuous life beneath.
and there's a line of retreating water where they put
their beak- and step-marks. I watch them go forward,
then reconfigure each step. Here, no cadence lifts
them through a tightening sky; but they seem to
watch the scansion lines fish make when they mouth
the surface. Today, no bird need transpose its steps
into an over-solicitous reach, or find a current through
their feet. It is enough to watch a river widen with
loose and silent evidence of a strenuous life beneath.
The Dice-Player
I've had my nose in the ring since I was nine.
I learned those cubes fast: how to play a blind
bargain; how to empty a die from my palm
and beguile by turns loaded with prayers -
then sleight-of-hand. Ten or fifteen years
and you get wrists like a tabla-player's, jaws
cut and edged by the knuckles and customs
of luck and deception. The fun's in sham,
in subterfuge, in the eyes smoking out
an opponent's call. I let my thumb stalk
each die, get to know which edge might
damage probability's well-worn curves.
See, all dice are cut on the teeth of thugs,
liars and raconteurs. I've concocted calls
those dealing in risk and perfidy, bluff or
perjury, would envy. But I've never stolen
or coveted dice fashioned from agate
or amber, slate or jasper, or from
the perfumed peach stones of distant shores.
Some think fortunes will be won with dice
made from the regurgitated pellets of owls;
or from the guano of seabirds that ride only
the loftiest thermals. I've always had faith
in the anklebones of goats, in the luxated
knee-caps of mountain-loving pugs. Look,
I've wagered all my life on the belief that
I can dupe the stars, subtend the arcs, turn
out scrolls, louvres, pups, knacks, double
demons -- well, at least give a game rhythm.
I know there'll always be an affliction
of black spots before my eyes, that my face
has its smile stacked slightly higher on
the one side, that the odds I'm not a swindler
are never square. But Sir, when some rough
justice gets me back again to the floor,
then watch me throw fate a weighted side.
I learned those cubes fast: how to play a blind
bargain; how to empty a die from my palm
and beguile by turns loaded with prayers -
then sleight-of-hand. Ten or fifteen years
and you get wrists like a tabla-player's, jaws
cut and edged by the knuckles and customs
of luck and deception. The fun's in sham,
in subterfuge, in the eyes smoking out
an opponent's call. I let my thumb stalk
each die, get to know which edge might
damage probability's well-worn curves.
See, all dice are cut on the teeth of thugs,
liars and raconteurs. I've concocted calls
those dealing in risk and perfidy, bluff or
perjury, would envy. But I've never stolen
or coveted dice fashioned from agate
or amber, slate or jasper, or from
the perfumed peach stones of distant shores.
Some think fortunes will be won with dice
made from the regurgitated pellets of owls;
or from the guano of seabirds that ride only
the loftiest thermals. I've always had faith
in the anklebones of goats, in the luxated
knee-caps of mountain-loving pugs. Look,
I've wagered all my life on the belief that
I can dupe the stars, subtend the arcs, turn
out scrolls, louvres, pups, knacks, double
demons -- well, at least give a game rhythm.
I know there'll always be an affliction
of black spots before my eyes, that my face
has its smile stacked slightly higher on
the one side, that the odds I'm not a swindler
are never square. But Sir, when some rough
justice gets me back again to the floor,
then watch me throw fate a weighted side.
The Dung Collector
Each morning she wipes the sweat that runs
from under the red dupatta veiled across
her face and lifts another load with a gasp.
Soon, she'll sit with her stupas of dung
and hallow the flies. Soon, she'll pray
each stack into the day's chapatis;
each new vat of dung into a tureen of dahl
to stir above the evening smoke. And she'll
work another hour or two raking the unbaked
yet steaming dung from the mud.
I have seen heifers
given more freedom to wander the earth
than this woman who carries another load
to her wall then chants with the traffic.
She could almost be any
woman humming at a task - moving a ladle
through vichyssoise in a perfumed apartment
off a sunny boulevard; watching light
slip into a room like a spoon into ingredients
for hollandaise sauce while she contemplates
the arrival of guests, the early yellowing
of the alder leaves.
Clearly, though, this is not
about workmanship; not about having a thankful
heart in a beautiful place; not about
being a speck in the slurry of a rushing
Punjabi street, or about a woman who must
save herself by labour and prayers.
It's about a woman who
must live under the anus of a cow as if
it were her star, who must slap dozens of
discoloured moons onto the side of her house
for an orange sun to bake; who hears
the sighs of the world as her bracelets
slip up and down her arms like the songs
of insects in overflowing grass; about
a woman who bends to scoop dung into a dish
each morning with her arms and hands
and looks straight into my eyes.
from under the red dupatta veiled across
her face and lifts another load with a gasp.
Soon, she'll sit with her stupas of dung
and hallow the flies. Soon, she'll pray
each stack into the day's chapatis;
each new vat of dung into a tureen of dahl
to stir above the evening smoke. And she'll
work another hour or two raking the unbaked
yet steaming dung from the mud.
I have seen heifers
given more freedom to wander the earth
than this woman who carries another load
to her wall then chants with the traffic.
She could almost be any
woman humming at a task - moving a ladle
through vichyssoise in a perfumed apartment
off a sunny boulevard; watching light
slip into a room like a spoon into ingredients
for hollandaise sauce while she contemplates
the arrival of guests, the early yellowing
of the alder leaves.
Clearly, though, this is not
about workmanship; not about having a thankful
heart in a beautiful place; not about
being a speck in the slurry of a rushing
Punjabi street, or about a woman who must
save herself by labour and prayers.
It's about a woman who
must live under the anus of a cow as if
it were her star, who must slap dozens of
discoloured moons onto the side of her house
for an orange sun to bake; who hears
the sighs of the world as her bracelets
slip up and down her arms like the songs
of insects in overflowing grass; about
a woman who bends to scoop dung into a dish
each morning with her arms and hands
and looks straight into my eyes.
To the Islands
I will use the sound of wind and the splash
of the cormorant diving and the music
any boatman will hear in the running threads
as they sing about leaving for the Islands.
I will use the sinker's zinc arpeggio as it
rolls across a wooden jetty and the sound
of crabs in the shifting gravel and the scrape
of awls across the hulls of yachts.
I will use the wash-board chorus of the sea
and the boats and the skifler's skirl
of tide-steered surf taken out by the wind
through the cliffs. Look - I don't know
much about how to reach the Islands, only
what I've heard from the boatman's song
and from a man who walked the headland
to find a place in the rocks free of salt
and osprey. But perhaps I can use
the bladder-wrack and barnacle, the gull
wafting above the mussels and the bird
diving back to the sea. Perhaps I can use
the song sponge divers sing to time each dive
and then use their gasps as they lift
their bags onto the skiffs. Perhaps
the seapool whispers of the sun-downers,
or the terns above the harbour are what
the divers sing to as they hold their
breath and swim the silent minutes through
with prayer. I will use the gull's height
and the limpet's splash and the wasps' nest
hanging like a paper lamp under the pier
and the little boat sailing out. Even the
fisherman lugging shoals over the stones,
even the sailors shift-walking the decks,
even the end-blown note of a shell levelled
towards the horizon. I will use the eagle's
flight moored in the eyes of children
and the voices of men, the ones, they say,
who've made it, though perhaps the purlin
creaking on its rafter, the gull squawking
from the jetty, the wind calling
along the moorings and the notes the divers
hear in the quiet waters of their breathing
as the seek release through the depths
are all I'll know about finding the Islands.
Meanwhile, I'll use the sound of sunlight
filling the sponges and a diver's saturated
breathing in the lungs of an oarsman
rowing weightless cargo over the reefs.
of the cormorant diving and the music
any boatman will hear in the running threads
as they sing about leaving for the Islands.
I will use the sinker's zinc arpeggio as it
rolls across a wooden jetty and the sound
of crabs in the shifting gravel and the scrape
of awls across the hulls of yachts.
I will use the wash-board chorus of the sea
and the boats and the skifler's skirl
of tide-steered surf taken out by the wind
through the cliffs. Look - I don't know
much about how to reach the Islands, only
what I've heard from the boatman's song
and from a man who walked the headland
to find a place in the rocks free of salt
and osprey. But perhaps I can use
the bladder-wrack and barnacle, the gull
wafting above the mussels and the bird
diving back to the sea. Perhaps I can use
the song sponge divers sing to time each dive
and then use their gasps as they lift
their bags onto the skiffs. Perhaps
the seapool whispers of the sun-downers,
or the terns above the harbour are what
the divers sing to as they hold their
breath and swim the silent minutes through
with prayer. I will use the gull's height
and the limpet's splash and the wasps' nest
hanging like a paper lamp under the pier
and the little boat sailing out. Even the
fisherman lugging shoals over the stones,
even the sailors shift-walking the decks,
even the end-blown note of a shell levelled
towards the horizon. I will use the eagle's
flight moored in the eyes of children
and the voices of men, the ones, they say,
who've made it, though perhaps the purlin
creaking on its rafter, the gull squawking
from the jetty, the wind calling
along the moorings and the notes the divers
hear in the quiet waters of their breathing
as the seek release through the depths
are all I'll know about finding the Islands.
Meanwhile, I'll use the sound of sunlight
filling the sponges and a diver's saturated
breathing in the lungs of an oarsman
rowing weightless cargo over the reefs.
A South American Tale
I've asked the poetry of my compatriots.
I've asked insomniacs, sonambulists
and those who owe a dept to the dark.
I've asked engineers, street sweepers
and seventy corrupt officials. Even the gypsy
in the hills, the one who sings at midnight
through a carious tooth and exposes the moon.
I've asked children singing in pulverised
limestone drying up the slick. I've asked
the laundress spraying stains off overalls.
I've asked the priests at wreckage sites
praying like pressurised air blowing stains
off a motorway. Some say Satanissimo is back
with guerillas; the rich say: raw sewage from
the slums; the stupid say, the Guatemalans;
the pitiless, the Paraguayans. Everyone says:
someone's making big money and I admit
I've declared (to preserve the pseudo respect
of my friends) - it's oil bleeding from a heated
tarmac, it's the rubber off frayed tyres.
Listen: have you ever been put to shame
by disclosure of a frailty? Once I swerved
too much for revenge. Once I sang
our national songs with the windows down.
I was sick of the agonies the road exposed
and of the highway-deaths of my countrymen.
Could this, after all, be just a shadow?
Now, when I'm driving I dream of afternoons
under alders, of walking along canals
and trottoirs and worrying only about
the excrement of poodles. I wonder -
have you read our novels, the ones that
make myths out of fatalism, families, feuds
and centuries of extraordinary events? Listen
even they have not prepared us for this.
I've asked the shawled woman. The one who
bribes anacondas with rats and marmosets.
Tonight, she will eat of the blind six-legged
goat and drink the blood of a snoutless pig.
Can you understand why I want to get out?
We've all invented explanations - asked
specialists, experts, pundits, freaks,
nuts, aficionados - any hag with a charm
and boa. We've seen the men
from the National Commission on television
and the Federal Judge who is investigating.
We've quoted from the Corruption Dictionary
(Vols 1 & 2) - because we've asked so many
bums and hobos and heard too many officials
say: agitators, provocateurs. But a woman
who sits on the roadway and paints
window-pane butterflies for a dollar
and lets them fly into the sunset for a peso
told me: it's the souls of the so-far-gone.
Her own hands were ashed with sand, rock
and the powder-dust of raw cement and I was
astounded by the blend of greens and golds
seeping out of her hands, the smoky half-tones
of dusk, her clear call to the dead.
I believed her. Later, I climbed seven stucco
flights to her yellow kitchen, my gratitude
spilling into all the avenues and back streets
of the barrio - but then, all she'd say was:
it's lousy asphalt, it's opponents dumping oil!
It was then I went back to my feverish books
and rarely drove again. Now, I no longer believe
in the road, enough to follow it out.
Listen: can you write to me, tell me
about your trees and your walks along the canals?
Next, I'll write to you about the quetzal
that flew out of the cool shadows of a tunnel,
about what it said as it squawked
in the light and thrashed its tail.
I've asked insomniacs, sonambulists
and those who owe a dept to the dark.
I've asked engineers, street sweepers
and seventy corrupt officials. Even the gypsy
in the hills, the one who sings at midnight
through a carious tooth and exposes the moon.
I've asked children singing in pulverised
limestone drying up the slick. I've asked
the laundress spraying stains off overalls.
I've asked the priests at wreckage sites
praying like pressurised air blowing stains
off a motorway. Some say Satanissimo is back
with guerillas; the rich say: raw sewage from
the slums; the stupid say, the Guatemalans;
the pitiless, the Paraguayans. Everyone says:
someone's making big money and I admit
I've declared (to preserve the pseudo respect
of my friends) - it's oil bleeding from a heated
tarmac, it's the rubber off frayed tyres.
Listen: have you ever been put to shame
by disclosure of a frailty? Once I swerved
too much for revenge. Once I sang
our national songs with the windows down.
I was sick of the agonies the road exposed
and of the highway-deaths of my countrymen.
Could this, after all, be just a shadow?
Now, when I'm driving I dream of afternoons
under alders, of walking along canals
and trottoirs and worrying only about
the excrement of poodles. I wonder -
have you read our novels, the ones that
make myths out of fatalism, families, feuds
and centuries of extraordinary events? Listen
even they have not prepared us for this.
I've asked the shawled woman. The one who
bribes anacondas with rats and marmosets.
Tonight, she will eat of the blind six-legged
goat and drink the blood of a snoutless pig.
Can you understand why I want to get out?
We've all invented explanations - asked
specialists, experts, pundits, freaks,
nuts, aficionados - any hag with a charm
and boa. We've seen the men
from the National Commission on television
and the Federal Judge who is investigating.
We've quoted from the Corruption Dictionary
(Vols 1 & 2) - because we've asked so many
bums and hobos and heard too many officials
say: agitators, provocateurs. But a woman
who sits on the roadway and paints
window-pane butterflies for a dollar
and lets them fly into the sunset for a peso
told me: it's the souls of the so-far-gone.
Her own hands were ashed with sand, rock
and the powder-dust of raw cement and I was
astounded by the blend of greens and golds
seeping out of her hands, the smoky half-tones
of dusk, her clear call to the dead.
I believed her. Later, I climbed seven stucco
flights to her yellow kitchen, my gratitude
spilling into all the avenues and back streets
of the barrio - but then, all she'd say was:
it's lousy asphalt, it's opponents dumping oil!
It was then I went back to my feverish books
and rarely drove again. Now, I no longer believe
in the road, enough to follow it out.
Listen: can you write to me, tell me
about your trees and your walks along the canals?
Next, I'll write to you about the quetzal
that flew out of the cool shadows of a tunnel,
about what it said as it squawked
in the light and thrashed its tail.
On an Evening in Late Summer
I want the bird with the key-maker's drill,
the chime-maker's hammer, the bird that sounds
as if a child with a piece of larchwood
hit icicles off a grille. And the man who comes
to sweep leaves from his gate, who feels
the shadows amass across his face the way
blowflies convene and scatter over the plums -
I want for him a sunshaft wide as a sombrero,
one he could nap under beside a stream
and a wild chyrsanthemum. I want to put
my fingertip in the eccentricities of a web
a spider has darned in the Christmas bush
and free a fly from its orbit. I want to be
taken where the sun puts the scarlet note of
poinsettias into the depth of a quince-coloured
sky, where the fringed wings of the thrips
and the ephemeral beetles of this February night
go on in the mind of a child who finds
in the honeysuckle and in the mayapple, a choir
loud enough to make her hum her desires.
I want to watch from the secularised regions
of the juniper a praying mantis step out
and tremble on anorexic legs as if it searched
for the chords of any diminishing number,
a psalmist trying to sustain a rhapsody
for Betelgeuse and the moon. What I want
is for the night to shake loose and whirr and dance
like a chanteuse of the treetops, like the bees
and the wasps drunk amongst the passion flowers
as if they were the ends of bows zipping
across strings in a concerto; then, over
the compost and the roses - in etudes about
life versus decrepitude. I want the wind
to rustle the buds of the lavender and birds
to tin-talk with the rain and the fall of summer
fruit. I want the wind to call like a Mexican
in his dreams the name esperance, esperance as
it blows across the uncut grass. And as I drag
my bench across the porch tiles this time of day,
weighty with the calls of cockatoos as it is
with the perfume of the gardenia, I want the fly
to turn the world on the turnstiles of its eyes,
I want a girl to turn plums in her hands,
each a magenta sun, and never need to wonder
how far anything is from a peer or a rival
while she hums her desires into the lobed leaves
and the scarlet bracts of the poinsettias, her finger
still sealed in the strings of an immaculate design.
the chime-maker's hammer, the bird that sounds
as if a child with a piece of larchwood
hit icicles off a grille. And the man who comes
to sweep leaves from his gate, who feels
the shadows amass across his face the way
blowflies convene and scatter over the plums -
I want for him a sunshaft wide as a sombrero,
one he could nap under beside a stream
and a wild chyrsanthemum. I want to put
my fingertip in the eccentricities of a web
a spider has darned in the Christmas bush
and free a fly from its orbit. I want to be
taken where the sun puts the scarlet note of
poinsettias into the depth of a quince-coloured
sky, where the fringed wings of the thrips
and the ephemeral beetles of this February night
go on in the mind of a child who finds
in the honeysuckle and in the mayapple, a choir
loud enough to make her hum her desires.
I want to watch from the secularised regions
of the juniper a praying mantis step out
and tremble on anorexic legs as if it searched
for the chords of any diminishing number,
a psalmist trying to sustain a rhapsody
for Betelgeuse and the moon. What I want
is for the night to shake loose and whirr and dance
like a chanteuse of the treetops, like the bees
and the wasps drunk amongst the passion flowers
as if they were the ends of bows zipping
across strings in a concerto; then, over
the compost and the roses - in etudes about
life versus decrepitude. I want the wind
to rustle the buds of the lavender and birds
to tin-talk with the rain and the fall of summer
fruit. I want the wind to call like a Mexican
in his dreams the name esperance, esperance as
it blows across the uncut grass. And as I drag
my bench across the porch tiles this time of day,
weighty with the calls of cockatoos as it is
with the perfume of the gardenia, I want the fly
to turn the world on the turnstiles of its eyes,
I want a girl to turn plums in her hands,
each a magenta sun, and never need to wonder
how far anything is from a peer or a rival
while she hums her desires into the lobed leaves
and the scarlet bracts of the poinsettias, her finger
still sealed in the strings of an immaculate design.
White Peacock
The feathers lift --
like the sudden coming on
of sprinklered water
over imperial lawns.
Breeze-shaken and trembling --
you imagine the break
into a drift of wish-flowers.
Now the fan streaming with dance --
(imagine the face of an
angel
streaming with light
in an annunciation).
It's the lovely silver rippling
at a saint's fingertips
in a Kirlian
photograph.
Seeing
is like entering a Chinese shop
full of paper lanterns --
voices whispering
in room after room like hands
caressing ceremonial silk --
until you come out
to a farmyard screeching of hens.
The peacock is just another sad rag-picker
about a cage, alone
in the knowledge of its palatial etiquette.
It goes about the pen-muck
with the geese,
the yokels of turkeys
slubbering at scraps, hen-poor.
Its chicken-wire existence
against which the tail, at times,
flounces itself
like a Marie Antoinette
or glows like
Saint Theresa among the stricken.
like the sudden coming on
of sprinklered water
over imperial lawns.
Breeze-shaken and trembling --
you imagine the break
into a drift of wish-flowers.
Now the fan streaming with dance --
(imagine the face of an
angel
streaming with light
in an annunciation).
It's the lovely silver rippling
at a saint's fingertips
in a Kirlian
photograph.
Seeing
is like entering a Chinese shop
full of paper lanterns --
voices whispering
in room after room like hands
caressing ceremonial silk --
until you come out
to a farmyard screeching of hens.
The peacock is just another sad rag-picker
about a cage, alone
in the knowledge of its palatial etiquette.
It goes about the pen-muck
with the geese,
the yokels of turkeys
slubbering at scraps, hen-poor.
Its chicken-wire existence
against which the tail, at times,
flounces itself
like a Marie Antoinette
or glows like
Saint Theresa among the stricken.
Mud Crabs, Low Tide
I feel a sharpness under the surface like tin-tacks,
having come down to their soft mud among smells
where most would retch. They sift broken bits,
tuck into their mud; the bay has the sound
that could suck a crab-claw clean: a low-tide restaurant.
Like the guileless yachts, or tunes
of light sociable chopsticks: their lilting suck and clink -
but it stops when you move, when the wind changes,
or when you ask what is their beginning or end?
Millennia ago there may have been a life for them
separate from the shore. Now they mechanically mudwallow -
half pig, half earth-moving equipment,
before they're dragged up on lines, harnessed and killed.
Clamped together they will clang into a bucket.
They'll try to scutle away on claws like tin-openers.
But a time waits in the mangroves
when branches will basket leaves to the tide.
They accept the sun that drenches them,
the mud and its fetor, the shore and its equivocal messages,
the moon shining in the ranks of their claws.
Yachts pick (cutlery tinkering an appetite)
and they thimble quickly back, their eyes needling
like blindmen's cues feeling for holes.
The tide comes and the river pours. By morning
they will have pulled themselves
through the same acres. I think of the
tinkling, the rattling in the enormous troughs
they're thrown into by the bucketful in kitchens,
steam kettling their flesh. The sun walks high
over dark mud and the made beach of their generations.
How long must they pace the brown field,
how long to endlessly dredge the sweet, the sour earth?
having come down to their soft mud among smells
where most would retch. They sift broken bits,
tuck into their mud; the bay has the sound
that could suck a crab-claw clean: a low-tide restaurant.
Like the guileless yachts, or tunes
of light sociable chopsticks: their lilting suck and clink -
but it stops when you move, when the wind changes,
or when you ask what is their beginning or end?
Millennia ago there may have been a life for them
separate from the shore. Now they mechanically mudwallow -
half pig, half earth-moving equipment,
before they're dragged up on lines, harnessed and killed.
Clamped together they will clang into a bucket.
They'll try to scutle away on claws like tin-openers.
But a time waits in the mangroves
when branches will basket leaves to the tide.
They accept the sun that drenches them,
the mud and its fetor, the shore and its equivocal messages,
the moon shining in the ranks of their claws.
Yachts pick (cutlery tinkering an appetite)
and they thimble quickly back, their eyes needling
like blindmen's cues feeling for holes.
The tide comes and the river pours. By morning
they will have pulled themselves
through the same acres. I think of the
tinkling, the rattling in the enormous troughs
they're thrown into by the bucketful in kitchens,
steam kettling their flesh. The sun walks high
over dark mud and the made beach of their generations.
How long must they pace the brown field,
how long to endlessly dredge the sweet, the sour earth?
The Caterpillars
On the headland to the lighthouse,
a brown detour of caterpillars
crimped end-to-end across the road.
Poke away the pilot and the line
would break up, rioting,
fingering for the scent.
Put him back, they'd straighten.
You could imagine them humming
their queue numbers.
I've only seen such blind following
in the patient, dull dole queues,
or old photos of the Doukhobors
the world's first march of naked people.
I watched over the line for hours
warding off birds whose wings, getting close,
were like the beating of spoons
in deep bowls. I put a finger to the ground
and soft prickles pushed over,
a warm chain of hair.
This strange sect, wrapped in the sun
like their one benefit blanket
marched in brotherhood and exile.
Later, a group of boys
(their junta-minds set on torture),
picked off the leader.
Each creature contorted,
shut into its tight burr.
I could only stand like a quiet picket
and watch the rough panic.
I remember them, those caterpillars,
pacifists following their vegetable passion -
lying down in the road and dying
when they could no longer touch each other.
a brown detour of caterpillars
crimped end-to-end across the road.
Poke away the pilot and the line
would break up, rioting,
fingering for the scent.
Put him back, they'd straighten.
You could imagine them humming
their queue numbers.
I've only seen such blind following
in the patient, dull dole queues,
or old photos of the Doukhobors
the world's first march of naked people.
I watched over the line for hours
warding off birds whose wings, getting close,
were like the beating of spoons
in deep bowls. I put a finger to the ground
and soft prickles pushed over,
a warm chain of hair.
This strange sect, wrapped in the sun
like their one benefit blanket
marched in brotherhood and exile.
Later, a group of boys
(their junta-minds set on torture),
picked off the leader.
Each creature contorted,
shut into its tight burr.
I could only stand like a quiet picket
and watch the rough panic.
I remember them, those caterpillars,
pacifists following their vegetable passion -
lying down in the road and dying
when they could no longer touch each other.
Catching Webs
A fragrance would call me out of the house:
threads sweet with pollens.
I'd walk into any alien zone or quiet radar -
(those stolen threads always fitted so close).
And sometimes coming back into the house
I'd feel a thread break across my lips.
I remember the white purdah of those days
spent amongst the undergarments of trees,
air crisp as dressmaker's paper
against the bright textile of summer.
I was a child with so much of my world
snatched up in a mending, as life unspooled
from my fingers though I could not feel
those long strands tariling to the South.
I'd go out after meals to watch a thread
trace itself on the sky and wait for it
to drift into my hands; or walk amongst
the flowers draped in the negligee
of their leaves. I remember sky
on rising sky, cool air on my lips,
stars that sewed themselves onto the air
like buttons in order of brightness
and a child's heart pushing in
like a needle, making a pattern
of its incisions; making a web
out of the stitch of its own silence:
thin thin darning that holds the heart separate
from its white dress. I knew a thread
could be pulled right through
the human body. In the fragrant air,
I felt the moon in my blood, trailing its wedding.
threads sweet with pollens.
I'd walk into any alien zone or quiet radar -
(those stolen threads always fitted so close).
And sometimes coming back into the house
I'd feel a thread break across my lips.
I remember the white purdah of those days
spent amongst the undergarments of trees,
air crisp as dressmaker's paper
against the bright textile of summer.
I was a child with so much of my world
snatched up in a mending, as life unspooled
from my fingers though I could not feel
those long strands tariling to the South.
I'd go out after meals to watch a thread
trace itself on the sky and wait for it
to drift into my hands; or walk amongst
the flowers draped in the negligee
of their leaves. I remember sky
on rising sky, cool air on my lips,
stars that sewed themselves onto the air
like buttons in order of brightness
and a child's heart pushing in
like a needle, making a pattern
of its incisions; making a web
out of the stitch of its own silence:
thin thin darning that holds the heart separate
from its white dress. I knew a thread
could be pulled right through
the human body. In the fragrant air,
I felt the moon in my blood, trailing its wedding.