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| ISBN-13: | 9781775581659 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 52 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Tendering
New Poems
By Ian Wedde
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 1988 Ian WeddeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-165-9
CHAPTER 1
The Relocation of Railway Hut 49
1
Yet why shouldn't I aim with "tender"
the best stories begin
"you're not going to believe this but"
I'm still just a taut sailor
on shore leave in life
(time to get back in the tender)
like my tempest tossed great grandfather before me
"Tend to th' master's whistle"
two white doves flirt by the water
Heinrich Augustus and Maria Van Reepen
Barnacle Bill and the Scandinavian Princess
I couldn't either live away from
how light stirs in the surface
(time to attend to the water)
sounds bound once in the braids and weeds of seas
or how the waves wash my spring head in sun
fishscales glittering on my dead father's arms
through how many lives' gentle propulsion
his sea man ship escorted me here
(pit ease sake against sea men)
and you can see
how the pitted concrete face of the city
begins to show the short history
of an early disenchantment
(certain material securities have not stood up)
drown the books
let purpose buckle against something of no substance
the rainbows that fall into our open months
our legal tender of breath
(here's just a pet food kingdom)
and the kids in the Fun City
aren't going to walk in one day and say
"Enough Space Invaders, it's the revolution"
(it's just a dog food factory)
it's the first few ships
Cooked Breakfast, Bad Karma and Gaga in Toto
stirring light into the water
whatever acids history serves us to fling
that I can't live away from
(imaginary mountains won't budge either)
just heave to live ear
listen see man pen meander
the moon drips light through my roof
wind croons in my ear
wherever I am there's no where to go
(chance is just another iron butterfly)
2
And you easy mark for the sick
vertigo of underemployed responsibility
better look out!
Know where to go!
Is the light fading
will the Cruise Ship ram the atoll
how do you read your musical watch in the dark
and what happens next?
Way out west among black iron dunes
contenders are shooting up katipo venom —
now there's nationalism for you!
Heinrich Augustus sailed through
the Dangerous Archipelago
beneath unfamiliar stars —
hanged if he was born to drown
on an acre of barren ground.
No vertigo.
Mid ocean reek of reef
mermaid's braids uncharted smell of weed
stellar sound of grief's wreck
passion's gentle helm
"Must our mouths be cold?"
3
Nose to tail in the pool
the swimmers turning and turning
I enter the tainted bowl of my affections
my chemical chalice
eyes grape pulped by chlorine
Through how many lives' genital propulsion
his sea man's tender helm engendered
to end here to prosper
This line I heave to Heinrich Augustus
This mouth I warm for him
4
As ship-rig pilot to this harbour
that the craft not founder
as reef and bar tender I sköl him
founder of my line
disenchantment and an end of meandering
here he found her
by sea man's nurture to tend her
his delicate dove by the wind's waves
shoving moonlight up the bay
outside the door of 49
the fast clouds roar
their shadow steers the sea
I tendered for the relocation of hut 49
single men's quarters
Thorndon Quay Railway Yards
you're not going to believe this but
$50 and got it.
5
Outside the door of 49
will be a slender almond tree
pohutukawas will scratch the panes
Past all realism the pet food kingdoms
green ache of barren drowned
broken knowledge of disenchanter's art
grave few whirled
The nearby smokehouse leaking mists:
eels, trout, chicken
49 dim in smoke and autumn dusk
the delicate almond whirling its leaves
Ships tended for weather tides turn
keeping tides to leeward of their pick
and 49's the bower I line on
while everything under the moon swings
Heart's vanity to prosper
brave new pastoral acre
in tended 49 my praise
pilots the smoky light through pain.
6 der Fischer
Hanging today the glass door in 49
Heinrich Augustus born in 1840
balance and an easy swing out
spliced his own tackle with a sewing needle
light casting its lures in
fouled the line and plunged in after it
sound of rain squall on the pane
double pneumonia in Blenheim in 1916
jammed any door I ever tried to hang
appropriate death for an old sea man
balance and illumination I can't do it
only thing missing was salt in the water
tomorrow, windows
7
Disenchanted city of few lights and less music
stand by pilot for ship rig
these clear stars of an Indian summer
one border your breath won't passport
harbour night watch man later
here in the dark no man's land
you draw breath like credit
how long can that last?
Steered clear of the army
ran to sea at fourteen and never been home
tending the tension right on pension night
schnapps intoning enlightenment
how much equity left in your barren domes
or hope in your heart pumping its orders?
My glittering dead father now
watch man pilot on his own death ship
remembered Heinrich's lone order and schnapps
"above all I respect his memory"
and all unnoticed by those armies
camped among their dazzling constellations.
Unnoticed Heinrich intoning Goethe
light entertainment
between their watch towers
the wasteful panting of your lover's breath
Hello goodbye I'm here I'm gone hello.
8
By the brave sail to prosper
on the strange sixth hour down under
drinking the new autumn air before me
amazing kitchenettes all sun set kissed
discover the world lovers at play
past all real ache men trod.
Spitting seeds from hut 49
orange's sweet cold cramps
sun kissed and tempest tossed
my little residence my making sense
the only conclusions ever reached
just heave to live here.
The Marathon Swimmers: Short Circuit (tuki waka)
They cast their nets of intention
by Rongotai, the marathon swimmers.
Dawn-light skids on the rooftop
of National Radiators, the built-up sand-flats
across Kilbirnie to Lyall Bay
the sewer outfall at Moa Point
the Southern Pacific shaking its scales
in sunlight. The lowlands of sand
rise above the invading ocean by an act
like will, red iron roofs housing faith
this habitat of the marathon swimmers
breaking history on their shining brows
their rising and falling arms
stirring light into Te Whanganui a Tara.
From its cage
calls the bird of heart's desire
te Huia kai-manawa.
Toia!
How I wish I'd written
"A bowshot from my casement Wakefield died"
but not in 1912
that would make me 72
a gross loss of thirty-four years at least
in which to have swum the marathons of my dreams.
Out there among dawning scales of light I saw them
the dreamy marathon swimmers
their solicitous flotilla dipping its blades
by their rising and falling arms
history purling from the wasteful panting
of their breath.
Sleepers awake, rise, grasp the long paddle
of Mata-houra keenly plied at dawn
bale the hollow keel, bale out the seawater of legend.
That reptile of the salt air, the shag,
claps his wings above the taniwha.
The blackback fans her air above the food
that floats about the rusty stern-trawler
Korean crewman floating by Miramar wharf there
white shirt ballooned like a marker buoy
20 Ngati Toa sunk with the Shamrock
went in stays caught the wind athwart
tapu fishfood in Te Awaiti 1834
gooey crayfish bodies & hapuka
fresh from Pacific Fisheries in Courtenay Place 1984
history keeps a long inventory of drowned.
But the marathon swimmers
move ahead where the light stirs the surface over darkness.
Ah, huia which eats at the heart!
"Get Into Loss" "Eat Shito"
Bank of New Zealand built where
snappers nuzzled cockles from sand.
Across the bay the dreamers
swim beside the tender flotilla of their history
and here comes Fidelity
one-one-five-oh Merc alarming the dark
the swimmers dream above
above the dark a long way to go
to where the marathons of my reclamations
discover two white doves flirting by the water.
Tender flotillas of light attend them
where now the BNZ sets its heels in silt
Heinrich Augustus and Maria Van Reepen
Barnacle Bill and the Scandinavian Princess
fidelity never drowned nor he any
the last ship-rig pilot in Wellington Harbour
my great-grandfather's rising and falling voice
toia! with feeling eye with seeing hand
sing it and with the rhythms of your hands
on pension night in Hataitai intoning Goethe
whom now by an act like will
we drown in fissures of light.
The marathon swimmers cast their
dreaming nets of intention
by Greta Point
below Hataitai hillsides where now the sleepers wake.
Karaka Bay Weka Bay Balaena Bay
the wakes dissolve out in sunlight
paddleblades dipping by their rising and falling arms.
And you whose place is by the fireside
in the darkened comer, now listen to the birdcall
at summer dawn. All this is told to warn you.
By Balaena Bay I saw them, the swimmers,
below the early flight from Rongotai
747 shaking fissures in the light
above the darkness a long way to go
to cross a world "als ich vierzehn Jahre ..."
and never been home.
Just have to live here where sleepers wake
to this roar of transport dissolving into light
and the swimmers' dreams of marathons
reach out across the harbour by "Point Jerningham".
"A bowshot from my casement Wakefield died"
where now adventure in New Zealand
drowns in the narratives of habitation
I wish I'd written
but not in 1912
four years before Heinrich the fisherman
drowned in his own breath
heaving to live here.
Birdcall at summer dawn
desire which pecks at the heart's cage
sing it!
And now his wide shining harbour welcomes the marathon swimmers
and Fidelity's one-one-five-oh Merc
roars out where their intentions dream
of going right around above the dark
endless rain of dead stuff
as though to cross a world by an act
like will, and come home again
to where the sleepers have woken to welcome them.
The Fall in America — letters from paradise
To the poet Eva Runefelt in Stockholm
Dear Eva remember the spinach salad by the big dead lake
I had salmon & you had whitefish
we both had cold beers & hangovers
some kind of flare erupting downward
out of the autumn sun
a woman's red nails tearing prawns
cool froth on your lip.
That pale horizon
seen from the towers of a dull megalopolis
seemed to suggest the endless potential of a meeting.
Some lapdog barks at the real world
a man gesticulates in a window
the trees of the world fall
one by one, with a sound of trapped wings.
When you saw me I wasn't thinking
these thoughts & I wasn't here
writing postcards from paradise
oily tits wrinkling in the sun
the rubber crotches of windsurfing angels.
Back in that autumn
I carried on my forehead
the bright sweat death squeezes out of us
or dancing, or loneliness.
We were all lit up!
riding elevators in glass towers by the dirty water
we were lost in a convention of foot specialists
air-conditioned heart
pumping icy sweat down my flank.
I greet you in your phrase
"the fascism of the non-ageing body"
which I write also for the sense of vowels
thickening under pressure.
One day we'll meet again
where the earth's glaring gas
flares out at the edge of the world.
Think of me when you eat the colour green
when you see the "Fall"
stripping paradise of its camouflage
sunsets like incinerated towers of glass
tourists watching a deluge of dirty water
chop the earth in half.
Toronto & Niagara '83
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Tendering by Ian Wedde. Copyright © 1988 Ian Wedde. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
1,The Relocation of Railway Hut 49,
The Marathon Swimmers — Short Circuit (tuki waka),
2,
The Fall in America — letters from paradise,
3,
Imperial Botanists,
Privateer,
Cruise,
Barbary Coast,
Mutiny on the Bounty,
The Good News,
Hawsers Hauled Taut,