When Apollo says he knows whether all the grains of sand in the world add up to odd or even, and that he knows too the measure of the oceans, and the number of insects that crawl the Earth, and the days of cities and empires, or how many waves are curling now about to break, or that he sees each butterfly flapping its wings and knows where every ripple goes, he is saying we do not know and that we should revere the knowing which is forever beyond us, meditate on it daily, pour water on the backs of goats if we must, to remind ourselves what we do not know, and never can. That is the function of the gods I still keep on a shelve in my shed.
Category Archives: Poetry
Olive pressing
Seventeen years, mostly ignored. Finally, we learnt to press the olives from our tree into oil, a process which widens out into a world of infinite connections: the universe of stars and dust. Such that I hardly know how to say what we did. Perhaps, like Homer, we’ll discover in writing something smarter than ourselves. First, we blitzed the olives in a food processor, which bounced on the bench, rattling and shrill-screaming, as it spun the hard stones and oily flesh into a khaki mash that smelt divine, like the dark loamy earth between the thighs of Papatuanuku. Each batch we scooped into a large pot and heated, until this indelicate mixture began sparkling like morning dew on a pile of dung. You can thank the sun for sending water to the mountains, and for it to fall back into our laps, though it took men like my grandfather wielding the levers to build the dams with steel cracked from red earth, combined with gravel and cement squeezed from soft grey clay; the hill at Portland almost gone. And all this flows to the turning of the press made from ageless aluminium, everywhere and nowhere in the Earth’s crust, journeying now into space… and held tight in our hands, to wrench the oily liquid from its fibrous body, as alumina is wrenched from bauxite using the holding power of alpine lakes. Oil rises to the top, best left overnight in a jar that you can dip a ladle into and funnel through muslin cloth. What’s left behind is an acerbic liquid any gardener will deploy with pleasure to cut off those obstreperous weeds in mid-growth. In a ceramic jug the oil will stay peppery to taste; a wealth stored, to be drizzled on the familial bread, and spilling over onto the plate bounded by its raised rim. With the last pieces of bread, we soaked up the thin pools of golden oil and licked our glistening fingers— like shining Gods we are, for a moment.
A butterfly’s wing
These sighs, lengthening loud; split world, cold glare, chances gone in a touch of time. * Pains and pleasures still bind a common hope. * A seamless sky behind the weight of Cherry Blossom. A petal turns into a butterfly’s wing.
Rain on banana leaves
I built a shed on a hill about the size of Thoreau’s. Nearby, I planted a grove of banana trees, lady’s fingers. When they’re grown and the broken heart of Autumn brings the heavy rains, I’ll shelter inside my shed and listen for the patter on banana leaves. I make a promise, Chu Shu, to think of you then and share together our ten thousand pains.
Devotions
In the summer centre, the island on a limb, the sun swelts the volcanic earth mixed with sand pushed up out of the sea. Manuka thrives, pink and white flowers speckle the near horizon. Beneath blackened boughs are deep pools of shade we dive into, a relief to skin and hot-flushed mind—such abundance, such hunger for contrasts given in plenty. * Flashes of silver, consumed by hunting eyes, somersault above the net, caught on our stage. The show, put on by the escapees, drags us from all over, as the watery world shrinks; the curtain drawn by long-shorted, dripping, wielders of the rope. At the wings, they hurl their catch of spike-nosed piper onto the beach in a rolling crescendo of pebbles and fish. * The southern wind edges the waves moving across the bay; white lines of static flicker and vanish: a jumpy picture of turquoise-blue blotted with shadows from dampened clouds above. Amidst the froth and crests of roughening seas birds in the distance race to a haven at the north end of Tokerau Beach, where the sands curve behind the rocks marked by Maui’s net. * The setting sun, like a cut blood-orange, bleeds out over the distant hills. The beauty, this time, is in the far view and the silhouette. In front of the lamp the Manuka are scissored. The shape of things distracts from mosquitoes at my ankles. We forget that we are prey often enough to believe in a moments bliss, ale in hand, crunching chips and dip.
The stonewalling shag
The shag declined to be interviewed, wouldn’t allow a photograph, said she knew nothing about the fish carcasses. “Ask the throttle-and-munch-em sea riders who were here last night.” She didn't have a song, just a certain way of puffing her chest, of being exactly where she was: the rock pools, the purple crabs, the decomposing seaweed, the curve of the bay. A rock higher than the high tide, an easy take off, these were her piper and pilchard. “Off the record, my silence was inevitable considering my original disposition to dive down under the horizon into the quiet.” After a long pause, while still looking out to sea, she said: “It's like this, those carcasses were of fish I knew in the way that you used to know the sky at night.” “Take what you want from that, I don't really care.”
What are you protecting Cicero?
Your oh-so-distaste for Tribunes who incite the popular crowd, what are you protecting Cicero? Your ballsy support for the latest drone deployment in Thrace, what are you protecting Cicero? Your polite way with handlers and a word for the homeless, what are you protecting Cicero? Your dream of heroic iambs on the steps of the Capitol, what are you protecting Cicero? Your lavish hosting of dinner parties for the argentarii, what are you protecting Cicero? Your blood-clean sacrifices in the race for everlasting life, what are you protecting Cicero? Your corpse in a vault with a tag on your toe―too late, what were you protecting Cicero?
Fishing a calm sea
We look into the water, the absence of wind and swell has flattened its surface, so the low setting sun cannot bounce light into our eyes, there's a rare dullness that we can see ourselves in and to a few arm-lengths below. Our faces peak over the boat's rim like two cherubs looking into a well. Our bait, whole piper, wallow in the visible zone, swinging a dud rhythm between two bobbing heads. Such tranquil sorrow where no tears are shed at the looming blackness of it all.
Our dog is like Frank O’Hara
our dog is like Frank O’Hara
aaaaaaalover of gregarious freedom!
we don’t want to train him—he’s untrainable
half wild, like a Coltrane solo
he takes free rein, takes it where it will go
he barks at everyone he sees with no malice
he just wants to say hello
and tell everyone he loves them
he can jump up in the air in crazy yelping pirouettes
he’s a bit of a show-off
he’s too quick footed for the big slow dogs
who can’t pin him down there’s no easy walk
trotting along beside in regular rhythm
it’s all full tilt, nose down, tail up, pulling forward
choking against the collar—sudden stops
deviations instant enthusiasms
abandoned for the next delicious scent tiring
and exhilarating, like keeping up with Peter
when his brain’s exploding
T.S.Eliot mixed with obscenities
he sleeps close to us on the bed
any noise, 2am, 5am, and he’ll leap off
and run around barking in circles it’s idiotic
and pisses us off
he wants to lick your ears in the morning
loves it when you scratch his head
he hardly eats, but likes to clean your plate
flies annoy him (he’s mostly content)
he escapes often, being small and agile
always finding a new way to get out
we’re lucky he hasn’t been hit by a car
we would miss him a lot
aaaaaabecause he’s full of the genius of life
our dog
a destroyer of shallow boredom
like Frank O’Hara.
In front of the screen
Low wet night,
dripping gutter path,
snail-weather, invisible
to the socked and buttoned,
blanket-draped, who’ve
curtained their day off early,
to sit with the flix, who must
only throw a chewy ball
over the couch repeatedly
to the dog who thinks
everyone’s gathered here
facing the same way
to play fetch.
Vaughan Gunson : Writing 