in the city things were going well

I knew I’d be home again soon

standing outside my own front door listening

for any sound inside –

to see if anyone might be home, you see –

but there never was
the blue car takes the right hand turn

at the intersection

striking the same precision of movement

as a singer can produce with sound

a long falling note for instance

uncanny in the way it recalls

the never to be found body of Federico Garcia Lorca

the way water falls back in a fountain

after it has jetted upwards
and that’s when the opera began to form itself

as it were

around ghosts of the twentieth century

a mother of seven children who took them fishing

every weekend to keep them off the streets

and to feed their hungry mouths

and here’s the operatic bit

when they each grew up at a certain age

each turned into a kind of fish

so that one was a cod another a bass another a snapper

a flounder a shark

(which really isn’t a fish but which brims with oil)

a sprat and a terakihi
in her senility demented she wanders

the lonely shore

and her lament opens the story

this same shore was where two old chiefs

sat by a fire many years earlier

debating who had been the better warrior

in their youth and they sing the song

old warriors sing:

I might have skewered you through the heart

and cooked  your bones for breakfast

but I chose to spare your life

and for that reason you sit beside me here today
as the tide runs out

connections connections I hear you say

to which I could reply

it’s all part of a dream

 but no, sadly, it’s true

no dream only the heart
the days are new

as they always are

and the times are easy

which they always aren’t

the blue car is just ahead of me

as I drive west

I notice there are seven children wedged inside

and a little old lady is hunched over the wheel

speeding along I see her wind down the window

and she throws something out

splat

it smacks into my windscreen and bounces onto the bonnet

a trembling flounder flipping its tail

I’m forced to pull over because

the fish has exuded such a slimy substance

I cannot see the way ahead

and in cleaning the windscreen

and standing bewildered with the dying flounder

in my arms I lose track of the blue car
this would be science fiction if

two chiefs in full war regalia  had not

walked on by

so to speak

as I was cleaning the thick glutinous substance

from the glass on which it left behind a tarnishing

as a soul touched or crippled by the power of the divine
that might have been my own description of myself

as I stood scribbling at my front door

a voice inside was pouring out dictation

as I filled the pages of my notebook

hastily scrawled and awkwardly formed words

the nature of which I found hard to connect

with the evening itself
the purplish air was almost black

the day was departing like a chief

stepping into his canoe on a lake edge

and heading out across the big water

as I fumbled for my key and opened

and crossed the threshold into the

colonial opera which turns out to be

a modus operandi for inveigling mediocrity

in a once-heroic people
call it progress call it success

call it the pasteurization of infinity

leave your long hair at the gate

we are expecting uncomplicated guests tonight

who will congratulate us on our achievements

since settlement

after the dinner the lawyer went on and on

like nobody’s business

he clammed his fork into the three-tiered sponge

which was already on the wobble

the pandemonium began to wail of better days

the harmonium bellowed out old lays

men slimmed their wallets towards sentimentality

women donned masks of old disgusts
this was the big scene in the marquee

before darkness crept across and under wanton trees

life sketched out figures of apotheosis

and flagrante

summer lawns wet but not with dew

and grass on which crumpled combs abandoned dawn

miscegenation begins at home

the shirt and tie mother nailed to the ironing board

becomes a new design for a national flag

we learn how to say hallelujah in all the languages

of the Empire

it turns out the father of the baby was a hats-off kind of guy

who departed last year to be a missionary

in Africa

his face is on the donation box as it is passed around

at church

your cousin tells you he knows a hole

you can slip through to take a short cut

it’s a portal to the thing you cannot imagine but know is there

and the very idea of “short cut”

causes you to burst into tears for the relief it promises

you don’t care it there’s a bull in the paddock

or a beehive under the macrocarpas

nothing will be able to catch you as you sprint

oh you are and oh you have

a certain flounce that never was seen before

in this universe