I need to get off LiveJournal.
Today I combed through my local Borders for a copy of cummings' Eimi, an increasingly frustrating task. Apparently Australians are not pretentious enough to warrant stocking the entire oeuvre of inarticulate American poets.
I did find some David Malouf, though.
Confessions of an Only Child
for my sister
Two years five days between us, and my nose
(or rather, grandfather's)
put firmly out of joint. Then half the length
of a pool over the hundred-metres dash
to my masculinity. You were like father, I like mother,
a happy compromise, though we were seldom on speaking
terms
and scrapped like tigers, mostly. I wrote you out
of my childhood, preferring
afternoons without you, a moony child practising thunder
by Czerny, Clementi,
to our closetings together through chicken pox, slow wet
weeks
at the beach-house playing euchre for film-star swaps.
My afternoons in fact
were yours. The poems are also yours, and empty
without you. Now there are deaths between us, and a marriage, three hectic stars
you've captured from the dark. They flare, they plunge away, go
flying
down the wet beach. We are left
alone as in our earliest photograph: a stack of ruined sandcastles
between us, behind
the last patch of scrub, grey ring-barked trunks in winter sunglight;
ahead
a night of carbide lamps. Like stars on brilliant claws battalions
of soldier crabs death-rattle
and wheel across the zodiac, sand granules
pour through my fist. The Pacific poised
on a day late in the 'thirties rolls its thunder
towards us, pulled awry
by the moon. Our faces gather
their lines, their light, we grow like one another, the high
cheekbones
of parents and other strangers
rise under the skin. We might be twins at last, with nothing
between us, no time at all. Burned to a blackness
we smile into the sun.
-David Malouf
from Revolving Days
I wasn't amazed by this until it hit halfway through with Now there are deaths between us, and a marriage, three hectic stars you've captured from the dark. They flare, they plunge away and then the last eight lines made my heartbeat flutter. It doesn't do that often, but I think I have a weakness for any imagery that involves the moon. Lame.
In a fit of excitement I may have started something that I wanted to keep secret as a surprise for the people involved. Except there must be a supernatural creature of small stature who lives to thwart my every attempt to not suck - for some reason I can't find where I stored all the addresses to send these non-secrets. So, er, I'd like it if you left your postal address here for no particular reason other than the fact that you like getting real mail in the post. No guarantees pls. Comments are screened, yes.
I did find some David Malouf, though.
Confessions of an Only Child
for my sister
Two years five days between us, and my nose
(or rather, grandfather's)
put firmly out of joint. Then half the length
of a pool over the hundred-metres dash
to my masculinity. You were like father, I like mother,
a happy compromise, though we were seldom on speaking
terms
and scrapped like tigers, mostly. I wrote you out
of my childhood, preferring
afternoons without you, a moony child practising thunder
by Czerny, Clementi,
to our closetings together through chicken pox, slow wet
weeks
at the beach-house playing euchre for film-star swaps.
My afternoons in fact
were yours. The poems are also yours, and empty
without you. Now there are deaths between us, and a marriage, three hectic stars
you've captured from the dark. They flare, they plunge away, go
flying
down the wet beach. We are left
alone as in our earliest photograph: a stack of ruined sandcastles
between us, behind
the last patch of scrub, grey ring-barked trunks in winter sunglight;
ahead
a night of carbide lamps. Like stars on brilliant claws battalions
of soldier crabs death-rattle
and wheel across the zodiac, sand granules
pour through my fist. The Pacific poised
on a day late in the 'thirties rolls its thunder
towards us, pulled awry
by the moon. Our faces gather
their lines, their light, we grow like one another, the high
cheekbones
of parents and other strangers
rise under the skin. We might be twins at last, with nothing
between us, no time at all. Burned to a blackness
we smile into the sun.
-David Malouf
from Revolving Days
I wasn't amazed by this until it hit halfway through with Now there are deaths between us, and a marriage, three hectic stars you've captured from the dark. They flare, they plunge away and then the last eight lines made my heartbeat flutter. It doesn't do that often, but I think I have a weakness for any imagery that involves the moon. Lame.
In a fit of excitement I may have started something that I wanted to keep secret as a surprise for the people involved. Except there must be a supernatural creature of small stature who lives to thwart my every attempt to not suck - for some reason I can't find where I stored all the addresses to send these non-secrets. So, er, I'd like it if you left your postal address here for no particular reason other than the fact that you like getting real mail in the post. No guarantees pls. Comments are screened, yes.