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