Poems 1960-2000 Read Online Free PDF Page A

at New Zealand vegetation,
    at the awkward landscape. I needed all my care
    for making the right turn towards the city
    at the hill’s base, where the paint-hoarding stood
    between me and the harbour.
                                                    For ten years
    that city possessed me. In time it bred
    two sons for me (little pink mouths tucked
    like foxglove-bells over my nipples). Yes,
    in this matter Wellington and I have no
    quarrel. But I think it was a barren place.

Stewart Island
    ‘But look at all this beauty,’
    said the hotel manager’s wife
    when asked how she could bear to
    live there. True: there was a fine bay,
    all hills and atmosphere; white
    sand, and bush down to the sea’s edge;
    oyster-boats, too, and Maori
    fishermen with Scottish names (she
    ran off with one that autumn).
    As for me, I walked on the beach;
    it was too cold to swim. My
    seven-year-old collected shells
    and was bitten by sandflies;
    my four-year-old paddled, until
    a mad seagull jetted down
    to jab its claws and beak into
    his head. I had already
    decided to leave the country. 

On a Son Returned to New Zealand
    He is my green branch growing in a far plantation.
    He is my first invention.
    No one can be in two places at once.
    So we left Athens on the same morning.
    I was in a hot railway carriage, crammed
    between Serbian soldiers and peasant
    women, on sticky seats, with nothing to
    drink but warm mineral water.
                                                     He was
    in a cabin with square windows, sailing
    across the Mediterranean, fast,
    to Suez.
                   Then I was back in London
    in the tarnished summer, remembering,
    as I folded his bed up, and sent the
    television set away. Letters came
    from Aden and Singapore, late.
                                                      He was
    already in his father’s house, on the
    cliff-top, where the winter storms roll across
    from Kapiti Island, and the flax bends
    before the wind. He could go no further.
    He is my bright sea-bird on a rocky beach. 

Saturday
    I am sitting on the step
    drinking coffee and
    smoking, listening to jazz.
    The smoke separates
    two scents: fresh paint in the house
    behind me; in front,
    buddleia.
                    The neighbours cut
    back our lilac tree –
    it shaded their neat garden.
    The buddleia will
    be next, no doubt; but bees and
    all those butterflies
    approve of our shaggy trees.
                          *
    I am painting the front door
    with such thick juicy
    paint I could almost eat it.
    People going past
    with their shopping stare at my
    bare legs and old shirt.
    The door will be sea-green.
                                              Our
    black cat walked across
    the painted step and left a
    delicate paw-trail.
    I swore at her and frightened
    two little girls – this
    street is given to children.

    The other cat is younger,
    white and tabby, fat,
    with a hoarse voice. In summer
    she sleeps all day long
    in the rosebay willow-herb,
    too lazy to walk
    on paint.
                    Andrew is upstairs;
    having discovered
    quick-drying non-drip gloss, he
    is old enough now
    to paint all his furniture
    tangerine and the
    woodwork green; he is singing.
                          *
    I am lying in the sun,
    in the garden. Bees
    dive on white clover beside
    my ears. The sky is
    Greek blue, with a vapour-trail
    chalked right across it.
    My transistor radio
    talks about the moon.
                          *
    I am floating in the sky.
    Below me the house
    crouches among its trees like
    a cat in long grass.
    I want to stroke its roof-ridge
    but I think I can
    already hear it purring. 

Trees
    Elm, laburnum, hawthorn, oak:
    all the incredible leaves expand
    on their dusty branches,