Allen Curnow

After those months at sea, we stank

worse than the Ark. Faeces of all

species, God’s first creation, cooped

human and brute, between wind and

water, bound for this pegged-out plain

in the land called Shinar, or some-

thing. Give or take some chiliads, I’ll

have been born there. Saint Babel’s tower

with spire (sundry versions of that)

stuck not far short of a top (Wait

for...

I

Repeat this experience wilfully. Instruct this experience to repeat itself.

II

With or without vicarious detail for all verities of this place. Me too.

III

Plenty of that already. Kikuyu grass underfoot, thunderheads, purple- patched sunshine offshore, onshore the high dunes, the hollows of wetted sand, rabbit shit. Foot of a cliff, arm of a stream where fallen yellow bloom degrades....

Rear-vision glass   knows what comes up

out of whatever   concealed exit

I’ve left behind   me. These cross-country

highways hide little   for long, and least

when driving east   one of those bright

spring mornings. Green   acclivities drop

back. Sheep with them.   What comes up next

comes fast, the ute...

A Pantoum

if th’assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch, with his surcease, success; that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all ... here, but here, upon this bank and shoal of time we’ld jump the life to come

Macbeth

Quantifiable griefs. The daily kill. One bullet, with his name on, his surcease. ‘The casualties were few, the damage...

AFRIKA POET HERO DODGER FELIX DEVOE CURSE EXIT CICERO BEASTIE SAINT THANKS FOR THE TAG AFRIKA POET ’93

Graffito, Lone Kauri Road

Seven thigh-thick hamstring-high posts,

embedded two metres and cemented

in, where the side of the road burst

into bird space, tree-toppling all

that plunging way down. A clean-cut

horizon shapes daylight. A gap.

Where the sea glares back at...