Rolling your own, Flanders, 1917
another secret from Mom
me the smoker
got to have something to do
fellows say
making a show of licking down paper
along a caterpillar fag
but that’s not it
this invasion of the lungs
is our choice
and the little flares
and the scatters of spent matches
as tobacco’s smoulder almost opposes
the reek everywhere
perhaps the cigarette soothes
some chaps’ jitters
or aggravates
depends I guess
how the nerves
trench in the brain
every dusk
it’s somehow comforting
to glimpse along Fritz’s trenches
a furtive miniature glow
A Fritz or two , Flanders, 1918
among our prisoners was a howling
fifteen-year kid
his comrades amazed
at finding kiwis
they’d heard we were home
dealing with rebels
against the war
(no dafter than rumours
we hear)
decent ordinary blokes
you’d share your last fag with
like Joe I’d known at Point Chev
with the hole right
under his helmet edge
some of them too
I reckon
are tough country men
who’ll agree the smell
of this soil says
a bit of a shower
will pug us terribly in
Depressions in the grocery shop
provinders too
can be Bunyans and Blakes
dissent’s artisans
weighing in scruples
behind the counter
hands wearing down
our own wood
knowing pantries and laundries
are sweetened
against our sweat
the Depression was long
a hanging on
eluding the wasting coin
of make-slog canvases
yet still bashing biscuits for kids’
pennethworth bags
it’s the weariness that stays
and of hoping for something more
by way of us all working
at lives together
long after the war
coupons derided
the reckoning of equity
across Friday’s table
in the Methodist church choir
unaproned we sing and sing
for Jerusalem to come
E, Pa
you hold me again
from harm of the sun
or hidden stars
why look away now
from the light and dark of my flesh?
why throw across me my gown?
why step to the waka alone?
Sir, why is the scarlet man at your mansion gate
why do curtains smudge your glass?
do you listen
to whispers at hearths?
do you guess uncles will teach
our child
of tupara and hatchet
of taniwha forray in thickets and swamps
the proverbs of pounamu and steel?
Ultimate Auckland
so civilization ends
not at sky crazed with ice flicker
nor a darkening of trees
but in scrub mire harbours hills
places with scarcely an odour of their own
and hutches native
to such a place
I wait like Blake of Lambeth
but less whimsically
for eyes and senses
to become fresh noticers
and for a voice to speak
for them clear
as the younger Worthsworth
or Chatterton
a girl a little recalling
Miss Edendale
shows the while
under gown and blanket
flesh and bone remarkably the same
but not in what
skin and of breath know
I study how fern knurls
deal with their weight
and how this light
drives in at the retina
and how beach wavelets
hint at the reel
of latitude
belly queasy with pork
weighted with potato
I walk aside from the fretting governor
and those labouring at plots
and resinous walls
feel the slowness
of each nerve planting itself
afresh
the girl again
laces the tent flap
shabby gown on yellow grass
her whole back refuting
epigrams patience
or bone
we stare into each other
breathing in balance
inexplicably inkling towards
flax clump’s incendiary burst
steel’s slash red
bells oaths psalms
and the taste
on tongues of our dust
yet bone works
at its bargaining
Waiter
the poetry seeker
steps to the morning
still twigs lack
thoughts
the cat’s a shape
inert against hedge
a child close by monotonously
chants the same broken words
the searcher sits
cushioned
someone will bring food
someone will bring drink
events will occur
lines arrive
light won’t weaken
nor turbulence clog air
nor joists judder
doors bolt
the wrist cease
its limber ease
Bernard Gadd 2003
