ERRATUM TO KNUCKLE: A NEW COLLECTION FROM PITT STREET POETRY

Catastrophically, I posted the wrong date for the launch (Thursday 9 July)
It is, of course, Thursday 11 July. Thursday. Thank you.
A picture, and a poem from the new book, in recompense.

 

Radio Carbon

Cosmic rays stroke the atmosphere,
smoky signals burnished by our passing, wave
after wave spinning the dial of radio carbon
against the background hiss of all creation,
measuring out our time to the core, dancers
at the back of the cave guttering torches
in the mind’s eye. Signals run out beyond here.
From this point on the choir becomes
a murmur then vanishes, water running
silent beneath ice. We bury our dead
in the ground and listen, the gauze curtain
of cosmic forces that calibrate a human hair
rippling like a field of wheat through air,
sackcloth through the ether – another
medium we don’t believe in anymore.

Blues for Persephone

Six pastels and a poem from later winter, made over the weekend of 11 and 12 May in the garden under new wisteria, mature at the root, in the slim-ankled season of Demeter and Persephone, first bud of fleeting appearances, the faint colour of memory in May, brief life and little death in sexy breezes swaying before big winds take them away. 

 

 

I could hear her but she wasn’t there,
the room was dark and damp underfoot.
A daimon had risen inside her,
spreading out like flood water,
tied up in the hair of her own spring tale
and letting it flow down the back
and shoulders, dark strands floating
on the surface, a sigil for retreat
as she stepped on the tiny blue
flowers of her dreams,
clothes falling from her frame,
voice calling from a very high window
in a tower with a spiral staircase
boring deep underground,
every step of the way
opening up like a suitcase
containing a bomb, blood,
a flash of dark hair on dark water,
voices cracking in sealed jars,
mouth Mercury, Pluto dipping its finger
and smearing the waxy moon with its pitch.