i

(lentemente)

Hansel and Gretel wander lost in a wood.
They should never have been there or here.

They should have resisted their step mother.

They should have berated their weak father.

They should have done this or that

and now they are lost, tired, hungry,

near a pretty candy house in which lives

a witch who waits to welcome children

then eat them.
ii

(andante)

more purposeful perambulation, now in a strange forest filled with exotic birds
The forest is lively with the sounds

of wild birds. They have names

but the children have never heard

these words, never seen such birds.

In the dark branches of fir trees

birds whistle or shriek or chortle.

They make this little known wood

which is already full of terrors

more fearful. Fear fills both children.
x

(ridicolosmente)

an absurd clown or mechanical toy
How it has no soul

but is animated.

How it is driven

but there is no driver.

It moves this way then

stops, jerks to go

another way, hits

against a trunk, upsets

itself but its legs and arms

where it lies on the forest

floor, still twitch, still

operate. The children

watch, nearly laugh at the toy

but cannot make it stop.
xiv

(feroce)

a savage chase around a country fair
He goes after him, past the merry go round

and past the strong man who could carry

the burden of the world on his shoulders.

Ah ha, the persistent and the dangerous

chase that threads through gaps,

between a couple about to embrace,

or a crowd round the coconut shy

behind a man who tries to throw

a ring over a shining foolish desirable

thing. Under awnings and behind the tents

a man runs, another chases with an axe.

Fearful and urgent, this flight.

Unceasing and determined, the pursuit

to see, to chase, to have, to hold,

and axe.
xv

(inquieto)

a disturbed, obsessive expression, possibly of life in communist Russia
As a filing cabinet shuts with a flat noise

so these days make a grey life and cheerless.

Here are the lives of prisoners who are innocent.

Here is snow and ice bound rivers.

Here are persistent police and correct

decisions and the typed reports

and a frozen ideology.

The churches locked, their maintenance

abandoned in these cold days

where there are bleak, short days and sunless.

Where a metal filing cabinet closes the gape

of its drawers, slides shut.
xvi

(dolente)

a wailing peasant-like lament, recurring
I don’t want to leave this far away country

for Ohawe Beach but dolente, the word.

pulls me to a bach and a lament next

door all through one summer night.

We did not know the word kuia.

An old lady had died we said.

The woman I stayed with, called

next door ‘to pay my respects’

she said. That sounded foreign,

a phrase you could italicise.

The night was short and the night

was still except for this improvised sound,

organised by customs I did not understand.

It was years ago this happened.

I was sixteen years old. I remember

that grief in Taranaki, the wailing

that excluded me.
xx

(lento irrealemente)

surreal, releasing us finally from the microcosmic world Prokofiev has held us in.
There and there and there,

two lost children,

one dark wood,

We too feel lost.

in the middle

and fearful.

The cries of  birds

disturb us unnecessarily

or we watch a pursuit

at a fair, the chased

and the chaser fast

through crowds,

the chased man gained

upon but never caught.

What they did was watched

from a concrete office

observed, noted, filed

There and there and there

until we woke

or until we found

our way through the wood

or stopped.

We emptied the offices

and filing cabinets.

The mourners stopped wailing,

went back to ordinary lives.


Mary Ayre played nos i, ii, x, xiv, xv, xvi, xx from Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives Opus 22

in the Nelson Cathedral on 29 November 2014. Her programme notes included  her idea

about each vision. It is her notes I’ve italicised and used to start each section of this poem.