for Arjen Duinker
1
Christ Child with Whirligig (Bosch)
twirling until Kingdom Come.
The Word is like the hold of a ship:
Heemskerck, its timbers
shivering in a spring tide, heavy
with antiques from the New World.
*
Batavia – a rainstorm drowns out talk of borders, where
fungi phosphoresce for our Lord.
Horses lose their shoes, carts
capsize as we ford the Almighty’s deeper
meaning. Wood holds onto the nail’s faith, wood
splinters on the nail’s dogma.
Paradise is here, between the thighs of a slave,
the taste of sea mixed with sky …
*
Existence is useless
unless you are a hammer – still
you need someone to pick you
up. The hammer ignores the nail –
they both rust but not equally
because nothing is equal; they are still
becoming nothing.
*
Absence makes the heart go
nowhere. Near the clearing, never
in. To revere is to fear
the empty
when all’s said and undone.
*
The hand that grabs at air
vanishes.
A net of names
drops into the illiterate sea.
The ambition of blood to overcome
ambition.
An arrowhead of cormorants
strikes the horizon.
The hand that grabs at water
evaporates.
*
The waves are available to all.
They do not discriminate.
The king also goes
under
for the third time, three
being the number of the unseen
One who wills but will not
intervene –
even to direct the dove.
*
But a wing must scan the air,
counting
time. And the sky is held
accountable
by the wing, as the sailor
and the wave
beat one another.
*
The ship needs the sea.
The sea does not need the ship.
The bird needs the mast.
The mast does not need the bird.
*
Atlantic, rain on the palm of your hand,
salt in the crease of your thighs.
Pacific, the palm of your hand salty
in the crease of your thighs. Rain.
*
Father is away on business, Mother
late. The birds are not of this world,
you hear them when you stop
listening. Every ship that ever set
misread the sextant, steered
beyond the known, the named, making
landfall on a beach of bones.
*
The solar system is a bangle
on the ankle of a god. Shells
inlaid on its rim, our hopes
shine for half the time, time
being illusory yet
divisible. What will we find, losing
our lives to endow museums?
“Provenance unknown.”
We thought of ambition as our rudder,
it is an anchor that drags …
*
The Word was not ready yet
the devil was a tailor
double-stitching Dutch sails
with Cain’s sinews.
A dove is not a god but
a dove with a sprig is godly.
The explorer draws his chart
on water, concentric
circle after circle …
In the centre his ship of bones.
*
To port the sign of the fish
rather than fish.
A wreck becoming coral,
the cross on all fours.
*
What was horizon presses
blood from the genitals.
This is love, the last
commandment: the tongue of a bell
fracturing air. There
the promissory note of the choir,
the cry of the godforsaken gull
swooping on a fish-head
left in the wake of a waka.
*
The sea monster was Appetite: it annexes
common from sense, stripping
prayers then oaths from master and mate –
they go down before the roaring
lord of savages, hermit crabs, and vitrines. Heads cracked
open, hold the Great Southern Land.
*
There’s a lot of space
left. We claim that space in the name of.
We use the voice of a futures broker –
it is an anachronism
and we own that anachronism.
When we said bread we meant hunger.
When we heard men we thought women.
When it grew dark we cried
Hallelujah! the night is ours.
Soon the stars will be beneath us.
The West: Australian Poems 1989-2009 by John Mateer
Going Down Swinging No. 29: The Unguarded Word edited by Lisa Greenaway and Klare Lanson
Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia edited by John Kinsella and Alvin Pang
Marriage for Beginners by Catherine Bateson
Views of the Hudson: A New York Book of Psalms by Angela Gardner
Fragments from a Paper Witch by Marion May Campbell
Blow Out by Rae Desmond Jones
The Best Australian Poetry 2009 edited by Alan Wearne
Unanimous Night by Michael Brennan
