so much literary progress
was obstructed then
by men who lived in Panmure
with their widowed mothers
not by any measure
a good starting point
predictive too
of late-life punctiliousness
where imagination
is concerned
*
white mane waved and moussed
chiselled movie-star looks
the elderly type in the
trench coat and cravat
who used to pick up cigarette
butts at the Mt Eden bus stop
asked me in a thick Balkan
accent if I was a Kiwi
and when I affirmed this
responded with vairy primitive
*
it was at a party
in Parnell
I saw him take a swing
at the face of a girl
who had nothing but
concern for him at heart
after which
neither he
nor his poetry
ever mattered again
*
one of his annually replaced
eighteen-year-old girlfriends
confided in me
he’s such a cunt
when he left the room
in a house in Remuera
apparently to defecate
unless it was the mirror
above the hand basin
that kept him so long
*
in a bar
in Herne Bay
he obviously
recognised me
but seemed reluctant
to make eye contact
such was the
female company
he felt unable
to introduce
*
we’d run into each other
every ten years or so
the last time
in Nostromo
a now defunct
second hand bookshop
in Grey Lynn
I still remember for his
handshake and the poem
we talked about
*
back from France
he confided his doubts
about his successor
in the Fellowship
our conversation
on the Three Kings bus
artificial stimulants
and Borges
a poem’s undergrowth too thin
to conceal a tiger in
