The Yellow Buoy
The Yellow Buoy Poems 2007-2012 e
C. K.Stead
2013
Published by Arc Publications Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK www.arcpublications.co.uk Copyright © C. K. Stead 2013 The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2013 Originally published in 2013 by Auckland University Press, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. www.press.auckland.ac.nz 978 1908376 14 5 (pbk) 978 1908376 15 2 (hbk) Design by Tony Ward Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Acknowledgments: Thanks are due to the following periodicals and books in which some of these poems have appeared: (in New Zealand) The Best of Best New Zealand Poems; JAAM; Landfall; the New Zealand Listner; Metro; New Zealand Books; Poetry New Zealand; Sport; the anthology Kaupapa (eds Hinemoana Baker & Maria McMillan); (in the UK) A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens; Katherine Mansfield Studies; The Hippocrates Prize 2010: The Winning and Commended Poems; the King’s Lynn Silver Folio: Poems for Tony Ellis; London Review of Books; Modern Poetry in Translation; Oxford Today; PN Review; Shearsman; Stand; Warwick Review; (in Ireland) The Sho p; The Stinging Fly; (in the USA) Harvard Review; The New Yorker; (in Italy) I Posti della Sala Capizucchi; (in Canada) Global Poetry Anthology, poems short-listed for the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2011; (in Australia) Griffith Review. Cover photo: ‘Beach in Norfolk’, © Tony Ward, 2013
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.
Arc International Poets
Contents
I THE YELLOW BUOY
Ego 1 / 11 Ego 2 / 11 Names / 12 Four Kinds of Love / 14 Three to the Left / 17 Catullus 68 / 19 Catullus Receives the ONZ / 21 Ischaemia / 21 C roat ia
Speaking in bronze / 23 Making it / 23 In Zadar / 24 The stones of Zadar / 24 Field notes / 25 In that moment… / 27 When I touched your wrist / 28 Last poem / 29 A letter to Jadranka Pintarić / 30 Sextet / 35 A/go / 39 C ol om bia
Love is a lunatic city / 41 Caracoles gigantes / 42 Last night I dreamed… / 43 The Prelude / 44 South-West of Eden / 46 Katherine Mansfield / 48 Waving Goodbye / 50
II THE SILENCE Lig u r ia
Before… / 53 Midday / 53 Buonanotte / 54 A memory of Valéry Larbaud / 54 Sonnet / 55 Languages / 56 Sonnet / 57 The eel / 57 Public notice / 58 Sonnet / 59 At the Villa dei Pini / 60 Asterisk / 60 And then… / 61 A Ligurian story / 62 Nell’ora cara agli dei… / 64 Four Versions of ‘Motets’ by Eugenio Montale / 65 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Waltz by Diabelli / 68 Barry / 75 Back then (but briefly) / 77 Venezuela
Talking Book / 79 The Return / 80 La Casa / 81 ‘Let us build the nation well…’ / 82 Greeneland / 83 Nine Ways of Looking at a Fantail / 84 The Maecenas of Lynn / 89 Double Sonnet: an Owl is Seen on Ascension Day, 2009 / 90
Three Poems by Philippe Jaccottet / 91 The Crash / 99 The Afterlife / 102 Sixes and Sevens / 104 The Gift / 106 The Silence / 110 III THE GREEN ENCLAVE
The Green Enclave / 113 Why Poetry? / 114 At Bogliasco / 116 Larkin / 117 The Dream / 119 Ave atque vale / 120 Malice / 121 Frank / 121 The Russian / 122 Of Course / 123 Look Who’s Talking / 124 Saluti / 125 ‘Grammaticus’ / 126 ‘Arletty’ / 126 End of Story / 127 Lipitor: The Risk / 128 To a Friend… / 129 Where am I / Who am I? The Cloud / 130 Stay alert / 131 Heaven / 131
Migraine / 132 Overnight / 132 In a Catholic country / 133 The thousand year Reich / 134 Has Been / 135 The Old / 136 The Death of Odysseus / 136 The New Husband / 137 Curno / 138 Syllabics for Roger Morton / 139 The Angel / 140 Names and Places Poem / 142 Leaving Karekare / 144 Author’s Notes / 145 Further acknowledgements / 148 Biographical Note / 151
Nine Ways of looking at a Fantail
1
I lift the lid on our compost bin. At the corner of sight, Fantail flickers like migraine through the sudden insect cloud. I am supplier – flies the supplies.
2
Feather-weight, Fantail bounces back off invisible ropes. He has perfected the hook and the jab. Dancer he is deft snatcher in flight of invisible snacks.
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3
Script-writer also of dark memorials, it’s said he conceals in that innocent twitter a summons to attend belowground your contract’s final signing.
4
And yes I know the story Piwaiwaka, how you warned the sleeping Hine-nui-te-po to close her legs on Maui’s obscene trespass, ending the hero’s life.
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5
Finesse, a next-to-nothing delicate arrangement of claw-beakfeather, of colourin-motion, but also in the guise of cute-and-zany a clear purpose.
6
A visitor (Ida would have said) from the other side, like the butterfly that carried Katy’s secret post-mortem codes to the transcriber of her letters.
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7
Uncle Ruru calls him Autolycus, snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Auntie Tui says she’s reminded of the unbearable lightness of being.
8
Lost in the selva oscura who should I ask but Fantail ‘Are you my death?’ He can’t confirm or deny, but why he asks, so far past nel mezzo should it worry me?
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9
This morning he’s back at the bin and darting through the plum tree’s branches. Winter mendicant he wants me one more time to lift the lid on breakfast. I do of course.
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The Maecenas of Lynn for Tony Ellis
Norfolk will teach you an elocution in the flatness of fens that stretch away for ever, as if a child ruled the horizon and the beyond is all sea. It was my cousin Catullus told me I would be met at the station by the Maecenas of Lynn, he in bubbly-plying blazer looking like that portrait of himself good for a decent knock or a difficult catch. Later in a green garden with one willow there’s lunch with poets and the best of booze. By Thorsby College tides and mud take turn and turn about counting syllables, pentameters, or counting on nothing but the run of a line, Muse-music, the fens’ fine-tuning of the tone of the times. 25 Septembers sneak by. Keep at it, Maecenas – the world has need of such wonders and the men and women who make them.
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Double Sonnet: an owl is seen on Ascension Day, 2009
The swallows are sewing daylight with mid-May clamour. I have hosed and swept the grit and dust from the terrace (accumulations of the months of our absence) and we are ready for another summer. Today is the day when Christ goes back to Heaven. Skies are clear over these ancient slates and the daylight moon, a white witch, dictates ‘You are in France again. Please pay close attention.’ The fig is in good green leaf, the jasmine in white flower, the crow has her nest in a hole in the plane tree’s stock; from its tower a bell booms out in full false voice its call to prayer, and the mairie’s two-timing clock with its cracked note and mistakes in counting the hours conveys only faintly a sense that it’s time to rejoice. Today is the day when Jesus rejoins the stars. Up on the garrigue and along the woodland tracks oxlips, herbs, and those poppies we claim for the Anzacs are ours for the taking – the season speaking in flowers of things to come, while the river, receiving our bodies, administers only lightly its admonitory chill. Our Corsican friend is here with her lovely smile and long brown legs, bringing sausage, cheese and patés with pain de campagne. Now here comes Night. Under a dark blue ceiling of starless velvet Minerva announces herself from cypress height and takes off, pale and soundless overhead catching light as she goes. Wisdom’s consort she promises nothing, not even to rise from the dead. St Maximin, near Uzès, May 2009
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