Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Tuesday Poem - 'So Over The Rainbow' by Jennifer Compton



So Over the Rainbow

My son tells me that
it's all over the Internet
Dark Side of the Moon
is the soundtrack for

The Wizard of Oz.
O Emerald City!
I travel north to pitch
a film to Fox

reading Spinster
by Ashton-Warner
written on my patch.
So few of us

from Kiwiland
that paua is annotated.
As the train pulls into
Emerald Central - paua*

*paua - irridescent hell.


I am awaiting permission from a poet (who is away at a festival it seems)
so was caught short this week without a poem. I was rummaging around
in my back files and came upon this poem, which I have always liked, but
have never managed to get anyone else enthusiastic about. No one seems
to get it. I suppose it hinges upon knowing that Sydney used to be called
Emerald City from time to time, oh way back then. And that I didn't live in
Sydney at that time. And as I am from NZ I know a paua when I come across
one. And the book, written by a NZer, which I was reading in the train, had a
most amusing typo. Hell instead of shell. That I read as the train was pulling
into Sydney (Emerald City). A poem shouldn't need so much explication,
right? But still, I have an affection for the poem. This is its first outing. 



Monday, July 21, 2014

Tuesday Poem - 'Cats No Less Liquid Than Their Shadows' by A. S. J. Tessimond

 

Cats No Less Liquid Than Their Shadows


Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned


To rules or routes for journeys; counter
Attack with non-resistance; twist
Enticing through the curving fingers
And leave an angered, empty fist.


They wait, obsequious as darkness
Quick to retire, quick to return;
Admit no aim or ethics; flatter
With reservations; will not learn


To answer to their names; are seldom
Truly owned till shot and skinned.
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.


 

 Written in 1934
by A. S. J. Tessimond [1902 - 1962]

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Tuesday Poem - 'A Man, Somewhere In History, Dying' by Jennifer Compton


A Man, Somewhere In History, Dying


Somebody somehow had a cache of film and a recording device.

To shoot the man sinking into the snow drift and looking up
in some Russian city under siege all those black and white
years ago.

And the light went out of his eyes, now we watch him die
and we can watch him die tomorrow, if we want to, and
the day after.

He gives his death, of hunger and cold and despair, to us.