Cover image: Dr John Ross / Cover design: Andrew Forsberg /Book design: Dr Theresia Liemlienio Marshall
(September 25) City of Strange Brunettes. ISBN 0-473-05446-9. Birkenhead, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998. 98 pp.
- Recovery (22/10/96-15/1/97)
- On the Occasion of Wet Snow (5/6/83-7/9/96)
- Albany, Quad Block 8 (24/7/97)
- One Version of Pastoral (3/6/81–15/8/96)
- City of Strange Brunettes (20/5-6/6/97)
- East Coast Bays, Winter (16/6/97)
- Bayswater, Night (25/7/97)
- On the Edge (15/6/97)
- Water-slides (9/3-2/4/97)
- Before the Rain (1/8/97)
- Morning at a Language School (2/9-5/9/96)
- Auckland by Night (18/4-8/6/96)
- Margarita’s (17/1/97)
- Unsent Letter to a Celeb (29/9/97)
- Windy Day (10/11/97)
- Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1/9/97)
- Fashion ‘97 (29/7/97)
- Two Kaipara Poems:
- Baylys Beach Revisited (11/4/97)
- Muriwai 1997 (14/6/97)
- Dressing Down (12/96)
- Angel (9/1/97)
- Reading the Entrails (14/3/97)
- A Road through Pylons (8/9-18/10/96)
- The Prospect of the Bungy-Jump (25/8/96-2/1/97)
- Influenza (19/11/97)
- Insomnia – 3 a.m. (26/5/97)
- End of the Year at the End of the World (24/1/97)
- After Rilke (15/10/97)
- The God Abandons Antony (1/96-7/7/96)
- Poets at Seven Years Old (7/91-18/5/97)
- After Petrarch (4/12/96-1/1/97)
- Aubade (12/86)
- Bilingual Recipe for Big Macs (7/7/97)
- Sig.na Greta Eta Meets Sigmund Freud (5/10/97)
- Prothalamion (24/2/93)
- For Walter Jensen (6/7/96)
- Poem for My Nephew (10/5/97)
- Elegy for Ames (18/4/91)
- Outside Cambridge (12/5/81)
- Théâtre antique d’Orange (16/4/81)
- On Failing to Meet the Zen Master (10/7/88)
- Stanzas of Consolation in Despair (29/7/87)
- Inscription in a Copy of The Tale of Genji (10/8/89)
- First Love (12/6/81-18/9/97)
- After Reading Berryman’s Sonnets (6/5/90)
- Sex-Talk (27/2/97)
- The Rooftop Cavalier (29/4/97)
- The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (29/7-4/8/89)
- Modem not Responding (12/11/96)
- Life in a Chinese Novel (24/4/93-17/4/97)
in memory of my sister
Anne Mairi Ross (1961-1991)
beautiful - gifted - loving
Blurb:
is love for them like poetry for me?Jack Ross was born and brought up in Auckland’s East Coast Bays, where he still lives.
A moment seized, or stolen
futile / fatal
standing at the front of the bus, icy
precision of winter signs
impending?
1 – Rothesay Bay
Non-concentric circles, but a single point
of balance weighing each
they sway together – twigs
upon a stream of piss
or seepage. When the new bricks were laid down
unchangeable, the stainless steel was set
in concrete,
did the architect prepare
for this event, these fragments
migraine-headache-like; these crenellations
clipped, I think, from bark;
this moment’s standing
on a wet spring day?
2 – Browns Bay
Ping Zhou said: “Too much influenced
by others – with a lucky line –
unfaithful husband,
fickle, or love-tossed.”
No comment on the length of life.
My horoscope next day said:
“Time to settle scores,
no risk attached. It’s better not
to take the option up, nevertheless.”
Three days too late. Today I watched
brown seagulls by the seashore
at Browns Bay. A jogger cantered past,
his world well-centred, like a photograph.
(22/10/96-15/1/97)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 10.
- Poetry NZ 16 (1998): 65.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- The Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive. Compiled and edited by Jan Kemp and Jack Ross. Special Collections Dept, Auckland University Library, October 31, 2004.
•
The girl walks out and leaves you all alone inside an hourglass of the falling snow; her hasty promises – see you tomorrow! deceive a poodle, and the telephone. Tragic you call me – fragile as a woman, ship-in-a-bottle under cardboard waves lost on a sea where everybody saves himself. Servant to a leman.
(5/6/83-7/9/96)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 6.
- Spin 28 (1997): 42.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 11.
Notes:
- "On the Occasion of Wet Snow" was the title given to Part II of Dostoyevsky’s Zapiski iz podpol’ya [Notes from Underground] (1864) in Mirra Ginsburg’s 1974 translation.
•
Venetian-blind rattle, Chalk-fingernail screech
buss of inky steel subsides.
on wood-pulp Black cap on
– red, green, blue – rust-red arm,
dishevelled hills athletic greys,
beyond Italian tower green exit –
subvert stayed purpose. dazzle sun-bright rail.
Dionë, city
whose terraces
are the colour of stars …
your jeans are creased
– your kisses sweet?
(Like jumper-leads
I hook pinched faces up).
(24/7/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 12.
Notes:
- The reference in ll.9-10 is to Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos (1949) LXXIV, l.11: “To build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars.”
•
After realms of sleep, delivered – delivered from the bondage of the self, return to Amaryllis gold and willing in the field. Those thighs cannot resist the party line et ego in … your strawberries and wine. But, anyway, will fashion undergo the tactile hay?
(3/6/81–15/8/96)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 3.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 13.
Notes:
- The reference is to William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (1935).
- Et ego in Arcadia = I, too, am in Arcadia (Latin). There should always be some reminder of death in an Arcadian landscape.
•
I – Newmarket, 6 p.m.
Golden Wok?
Smoke?
What d’ya think?
Red jacket, nicely cut,
step on it, twist it underfoot
on Broadway – if you’re blue and you don’t know
where to go to why don’t ya go
where fashion sits
puttin’ on the Ritz … or
David Lawrence?
Lean against the car.
It’s cold! Or – cold-ish.
Flagging your ride, enfin;
white station-wagon, roofrack,
holding up one lane …
II – Albert St., 6.45 p.m.
is love for them like poetry for me?
A moment seized, or stolen
futile / fatal
standing at the front of the bus, icy
precision of winter signs
impending?
“How did you like the film?”
waistcoated usher asks. “Oh, well …”
I liked it; I was there
in Thatcher’s late cobalt reign
of darkness: ’80s, college
… puking in the aisle.
III – Atrium on Elliott, 12 Noon.
A cackle of darkness
from white tables
blue-jeaned girls line up
to lap Big Macs
– no time to write –
kenspeckle floor
under bland airbrushed limbs …
Stop eyeing me!
I’ll close them with a pick.
The spark is missing;
Alternator’s stuffed.
A Sikh wife tells me of her Moslem husband:
“He’s working in Japan,
leaves me alone …”
The possibility of parallels
occurs.
Céline Dion
cranks up for one more song
bent over in a rictus of desire.
IV – Tony’s, 12.30 p.m.
Invisible today, stalking down Lorne St.
(fashion-victims have a furtive gauge
in turning eyes) …
How can you embrace
this age? I can’t even pronounce it
– Take your tongue away
I’m out of spite, today
(20/5-6/6/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 14-17.
Notes:
- II – The film in question was Mike Leigh’s Career Girls (1996).
•
Live the lifestyle, walk and talk the talk; I like the sea above the land; when driving yellow minis, cover up caput mortuum with woolly hat. Not so much a Mannerism, more a way of life – the Canaletto above my TV eye feints, tranquil, off. My window frames the same white-caps of sky.
(16/6/97)
Publications:
- Spin 30 (1998): 6.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 18.
Notes:
- caput mortuum = Death’s head (Latin).
•
Car-headlights in the mirror of the bay, marina piers feed to capillaries white, orange, blue.So rude, eh? Supporting all those olds.The girl ahead reveals a profile shaped like an éclair.Wasting five million.Stubble rasps his hand, lobes curl like hooks.It sucks. Why can’t the govt be rich?Petersburg, the Admiralty and Devonport’s serrated mews s’opposent – Armadillo, Kenny’s, neon streets supporting all the dead.
(25/7/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
The lawn slopes to the sea, Rakino, Tiri: green and red and blue grass, flowers, sky … A life lived on the edge. Pity those windows when the wind gets up; don’t envy them in winter staring at Browns Bay reef (my father saw the bodies brought ashore from the wreck in ’36). Now, in that light, I’m touted as a fraud, a plant – you guessed it: gangsta at the fair.
(15/6/97)
Publications:
- Spin 29 (1997): 31.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
The dehumidifier’s waking roar
disarms me –
seldom turned to sleep
from waking, seldom turned to sleep.
Spruce Caroline, our Lady of the Snows,
put out that stub. Don’t disentangle
me, as others, from your flame-red hair.
The air
bites shrewdly as the winter comes.
Today the boat tacked sluggishly,
blue bivalve dwarfed by greenstone waves.
Walking at Wenderholm, where I walked with her,
with Kate, the green stroked my dull eyes.
We talked of marriages and water-slides.
(9/3-2/4/97)
Publications:
- Spin 28 (1997): 43.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
For K. M. Ross
Storm from the west arcs over sparrow hills;
Les’ vineyard: paint on stucco walls.
As in a desert, sand blocks the horizon:
grey clouds, darkness, in the foreground – sun,
and then the rainbow.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our hero
fancies himself Oscar Wilde – nice narrow-
hipped brown boy waiting for the bus –
not that so much as De Profundis:
fogged-up windows
stain the storm-clouds blue.
(1/8/97)
Publications:
- Spin 30 (1998): 57.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1905): a long letter written to Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading gaol: Suspiria de profundis = sighs from the abyss (Latin).
•
For Lisa Bieleski
My eyes are open behind their lids,
they see through darkness
into night.
The rain beats down outside.
I compose letters
in my head – long, snarling, bitter ones –
to someone dead.
Meanwhile in China, dogs harass Ping Zhou,
my student, as he makes for home.
“The train is always pointing the wrong way
when you need it”
and when you jump off
gravel scores your brow.
Not so Eiichi, flying to Japan –
his second time aloft (a source of fear);
his dream’s to have a small house in the suburbs,
a writer living near whom he could visit
to ask advice ...
pragmatic, or illicit?
I coach them for exams – we talk all day,
cross-purposes at times. Inside this room
it is Korea.
Auckland rushes by.
Kyung Lee purses her lips;
“It’s nice to see you.”
(2/9-5/9/96)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 9.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- Just Another Fantastic Anthology: Auckland in Poetry. Ed. Stu Bagby. ISBN 978-0-473-13767-0. Auckland: Antediluvian Press, 2008. 64.
•
None of this wimping out at an orange light,
it’s not the New Zealand way;
down there below us
an orange telephone, lit-up, drives by.
The Colonel bows his head from some fat heaven
of endless chicken-breasts
run, Yasmine, run
– run like the wind!
Anne Heche wears tight jeans – buns clenched like fists.
We’ve had a plague of ants at home for days
crawling all over bowls of congealed food;
kids smoke on corners;
Conrad calls on Allah
Exterminate all the brutes in dim Milford ...
(18/4-8/6/96)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 1.
- Spin 30 (1998): 66.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), Kurtz’s report on the suppression of savage customs ends with “a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand … ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’”
•
I
Drunk, with no eyes, you’ll best appreciate
Margarita’s – Bar of Dreadful Night:
where Ji-Young gets her kicks
on U.S. 66.
A Cerberus may beard you at street-level.
Resist! Continue down the slippery spiral
stairs, till you hit disco.
Try a sauce-soused nacho.
Pool, pinball, pokies, and a Buick grille –
dismembered body – stapled to the wall.
Why so immediately
congenial to me?
They tell me, after midnight, ’s quite a blast.
The punkahs stir no breeze, however fast
they whirr. Gargoyles on screen
illuminate the scene.
II
I’m sure I could drink in an Auckland bar every night
for a year and never talk to anyone. Something in the
face, no doubt. Unapproachable. I don’t make a good
first impression.
As for the gyrating fools around me, who wants to
speak to them? Tom Selleck look-alikes with
bar-handles, raddled youth, the sweepings of the
language schools. I spit on them.
Actually, I’d love them to ask me what I’m writing –
like those two guys in Turangi, where the natives are
always restless.
Two drivellers in the booth behind me:
“What would you do with three million dollars?”
“Save two and a half million; get my driver’s licence;
buy a car, three houses, then I’d rent them.”
In Browns Bay, ready for the America’s Cup.
Outside, at least the sky has some dignity left.
Clouds salmon-coloured, grey and white
– unlike the clicking man ahead.
“Slam the bastards,” as the young boy said.
(17/1/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Dear Alison Mau, the No. Dear Ms. Mau, a world would be gutted paua of poor report shell cracks into without your crooked smile, rainbow halves, green-salad smirk … oil-slick …So why do I write to you? Quite blonde, no doubt, of me.The other day I … drove to Helensville, then up the Kaipara, across to Wellsford, down through Warkworth, Waiwera … – Looking for what? My soul? Get real! No, but if it’s gone, what better place to look than there? hunting across dun sands, grained mirror-pools, triangular glass-blown fragments – of a skylight? – left behind. We walked out to the island once, I know. Once I made her cry walking at Orewa – Hatfield’s, Shakespeare’s, Army Bay. I wish I’d written something better then, tracing those letters: Alif, ghayn, perhaps to say, Dear Alison, you’re not the only one I’ve known (not that I know you, seen you, yes, of course – who hasn’t? Stop qualifying yourself!) The tide was in then, out now. Your diction’s not so great, tu sais, ma biche. Who cares? Fanciulla dell’ RAI, Girl of the Golden Screen, you seem to be complete: svelte, youthful, beautiful, Queen of (TV) hearts … So: beaches – panes – why linked? Ask Bette: “You are the wind beneath my wings …” You are the eastern seaboard, tidal chirr of the air-conditioning next door, surf on a reef, a far-off palm-frond shore …
(29/9/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- Just Another Fantastic Anthology: Auckland in Poetry. Ed. Stu Bagby. ISBN 978-0-473-13767-0. Auckland: Antediluvian Press, 2008. 42-43.
Notes:
- Alison Mau was, at the time of writing, a TV1 newsreader.
- Alif, ghayn = the 1st and 19th letters of the Arabic alphabet.
- Ma biche = my hind, or doe (French). There are no pejorative implications, unlike “bitch.”
- Fanciulla dell’ RAI. Puccini’s opera La Fanciulla del West (1910) is called in English The Girl of the Golden West.
- RAI = Radiotelevisione Italiana. The Italian equivalent of TVNZ.
- Bette Midler starred in the film Beaches (1988), which featured the song “Wind beneath my wings.”
•
Holding your blue dress down
against the weather
– charming gesture.
Why? Invoking protection
from the storm?
Mother and pink daughter
hand in hand – six? seven?
Chubby girl, unsmiling,
no dew-eyed heaven there
to envy.
The wind brings out
school children, scudding home
in drifts – I watch them
furtively; a few of them
glare back.
They’ve heard about my sort before.
(10/11/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair
– Ben Jonson, “Hymn to Diana”
Why did we never notice?
“Princess Die.”
Not Queen but quarry,
chased ’cos fair,
perhaps.
Rest now – no longer
shiver thin
for snaps.
(1/9/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Islanded, your cheekbone; sweeps of hair surround your shell-like … Why not black today? Why not? Like every other day. Skirt, fitted jacket – toss a coin you’ll hit a thousand backside of Queen St. The New Look, still? Christian Dior’s insane desire? * * * Once up I see, not Louise Brooks, but Michelle Forbes: jeans, chrome-green backpack, Regenhimmel über einer Landschaft hair. The same again, perhaps? Did you see yourself in that old film: “Shakhmati” – Chess-Crazy? Fifty years on, we quarrel over names.
(29/7/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Louise Brooks is the star of Pandora’s Box (1929), a silent movie based on Alban Berg’s opera Lulu.
- Michelle Forbes is an actress who appeared in the Brad Pitt film Kalifornia (1994), among many others.
- Regenhimmel über einer Landschaft = rain-skies over a landscape (German). A line from Rilke’s “Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes” (1907).
- Shakhmati = chess (Russian). “Chess-Crazy” is a Russian short film from the 1920s.
•
For K.S. 1 – Baylys Beach RevisitedWANTED – WORTHY CAUSE TO DIE FOR. ALL REPLIES CONSIDERED. (PHOTOGRAPH ENCLOSED).Or else to live for … here on Baylys Beach for the first time I’m really out of sight: just plastic bottles, and pale avians beach-combing. Tyre-tracks too, of course. I’m looking for the shipwreck three k’s down (they say) uncovered by the gales each winter, then covered up again. Uncle Toby’s popcorn bars got here before me – three k’s down. The organ of the surf (do you like that, old man? Yes – runs and stops of waves just like a keyboard – white upon blue-grey) has not mastered polyphony as yet but gets its own effects – brutally simple, brutally short: “Come in and try your luck with us.”
2 – Muriwai 1997 Mist is longterm; melancholy sticks to places, picking up on … what? A kind of light? Sit down on this tree – flayed driftwood – and take out your pen … just then the waves came up and buried me. What help’s white panama and shades, el gringo, here on this black beach? Shiva rides by, whistling his dog in some paired time – some parallel universe – tenuous as sight-lines in salt fog. Returning, always returning, to old errors, tot up random centuries of scores, you’ll come up zero. Footsteps here beside me, iron dunes, bottle-green wave-riders, reset the clockface to: eternity.
(11/4/97 & 14/6/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- I – “Baylys Beach” [Landfall 191 (1996): 110] is the title of a posthumously published poem by Kendrick Smithyman (1922-95).
- II – “Muriwai 1957” comes from his earlier collection Inheritance (1962).
•
Cling-film-close jeans – with rips, or fraying seams
stitched in with fashionable exactitude –
tank-tops (trimmed short); and, boldest
of all, bare feet
I sing. Simple business suits in primary
shades – heels, pantyhose – don’t date (of course),
yet even there, the hair
is best brushed out:
long waves of corn-silk, lion-like, a mane
static-electric to the amorous touch.
As for these ’seventies
hip-huggers, why
resist? Embrace the bounty of those years:
eyes painted on the inside, purple haze
along the cheekbones, shame-
less sinks of style!
Some things outshine carping dispute: Bach’s
Buss’ und Reu’, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody,
The Tale of Genji, “Leave for Cape
Wrath tonight,”
and you, fair daughters of our sea-bright town,
wasp-waisted isthmus: smartest when dressing down.
(12/96)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Buss’ and Reu’ = penance and remorse (German). The title of one of the arias in J. S. Bach’s Matthäus-Passion (1729).
- “Bohemian Rhapsody:” a song from the Queen album A Night at the Opera (1975), apotheosised in the film Wayne’s World (1991).
- The Tale of Genji = Genji-monogatari by Murasaki Shikibu (c.980-c.1030), the first psychological novel in world literature.
- “Leave for Cape Wrath to-night,” a line from W. H. Auden’s early poem “From scars where kestrels hover …” (1929).
•
Do Daleks attend church? Why do
they build them – not to mellow
but decay? Rapture is an orange smile,
four doors, investments in Ron Trotter Corp.
Boy wearing a Tool t-shirt, his pale friend
in army camouflage, take off for home;
they’re talking about Satanism. Girls
in black-and-white adorn a zebra crossing.
Steel earrings in her lobes, a page-boy shock
of dark-blonde hair – short shirt –
my angel turns
her head back towards me but will not smile.
(9/1/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- Jewels in the Water: Recent New Zealand Poetry for Younger Readers. Edited by Terry Locke. ISBN 0 9583655 4 7. Hamilton: Leaders Press, 2000. 88.
•
Killing a wasp today at the request
of the gum-chewing chick beside me
I was eyed
by you, brown legs, tight shorts,
two canvas packs … adventurous
(a wallet clenched quite firmly in one hand).
“Be kind; be kind; be kind,”
said Henry James – three golden rules.
Is it time to wash
my handkerchief again, ô pauvre guêpe?
(14/3/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- ô pauvre guêpe = poor wasp (French).
•
Utes and Land Rovers traverse it,
black-and-white cows reside
beside it,
like a crest of sun-dried
sand
on beach-dunes
it spills over slowly
into anywhere.
Last night Turangi,
through Taumarunui,
Mangakino, on to the “great lake.”
Clouds drift by, birds sing –
tentative – above the engine,
the Sunday tourist
tries not
to be fake.
(8/9-18/10/96)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 7.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
I – AnticipationElastic gods below us – steak and chips at risk inside. I guess the stomach’s still the most unerring guide. I fear to fall – the Horror of the Heights enfolds me and I semaphore despair. The girl in front (Chinese) requires a push to carry on. My life is fear, so I acceptconfusion’s acid reign ... After seven tries I need a push to carry on. II – la Jetée The air jerks me awake like a falling dream. I strut back up again. Spine pulled out taut, my calves cramp up to meet the terror of re-entry. No pressure on the eyeballs – yet. Both retinas seem to be attached. Unlike an ill-judged climb over mountain grass this slip can be reversed. III – Aftermath Better than sex, they say – I can’t agree; at least, the pleasures are too far apart. Sex is so different from what “they say:” the smoothness of a shoulder, or a moment when suddenly you’re in another skin. As for the bungy-jump, paraphernalia and queuing can outweigh the pure descent. The trick is not to know that you may float.
(25/8/96-2/1/97)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 4-5.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- I – “The Horror of the Heights” is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
- II – La Jetée = the jetty, or pier (French). It is the title of a short film by Chris Marker, as well as making allusion to the verb “jeter,” to throw.
•
Phatic hiatus – little death? The sternutatory paroxysm. Coughing: tousser – “tosser to my kick” (thieves’ argot for a tickled purse). “Led by the nose:” submissive. You get your mucous membranes pierced for this? “Liar’s quinsy,” Auden called sore throats. Mine comes from TOEFL grammar points.
(19/11/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- TOEFL = Test of English for Foreign Learners. An American-designed University Entrance examination.
•
withdrawn – neelbdune sullen – sellun bellicose – belnoosedune is five times three l rounds to o, becomes Anaïs: four three four one three divide again: noose – done defy your sums
(26/5/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
You go out most nights with friends – Wednesdays, aquarobics in the gym; work, parties, round and round and round … Perhaps you’ve lost it too; perhaps you miss our double-bed on Sunday mornings, light kept well away – breakfast on a tray. You always liked to have me stroke your hair. Brown – amber – gold; I don’t know what to say about having neglected it of late. In any case, it’s over. A cat cries to be let in, but I harden my heart. I forward Christmas cards addressed in error.
(24/1/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß. Lord: it is time. The summer was so gross Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren, Hang your shadows from car-aerials und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los. … And over asphalt let dust-devils loose Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr. Whoso no house hath, will not build it now Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben … Whoso’s alone, long will remain that way Lord, it is time – the summer was so gross. Hang your shadows from car aerials, and over asphalt let dust-devils loose. Tell the last girls to cover up their breasts – no more sunbathing on the eastern shore – button up trousers, blouses, coats; no more blood-sweetness from the wine-dark flesh. Whoso no house has, will not build it now. Whoso’s alone, long will remain that way: walk, read a little, tap-tap every day long letters – wander listlessly fall alleys, where the dead leaves stray.
(15/10/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- "Three Versions from Rilke (2019)." Papyri (21/4/19).
- Rilke in English. The Imaginary Museum (4/4/26).
Notes:
- Rainer Maria Rilke, “Herbsttag,” Das Buch der Bilder I (1902). Text from Sämtliche Werke, ed. Ernst Zinn, 6 vols (Frankfurt: Insel, 1987) 1: 398:
Herbsttag Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren, und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los. Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein; gieb ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage, dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein. Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr. Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben, wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben und wird in den Alleen hin und her unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.
•
After C. P. Cavafy At midnight, when you wake to hear Dionysiac revellers passing by invisible, with voices singing, do not decry your own bad luck, the failure of your life, the schemes that came to nothing, futilely. Like one prepared, like a courageous man, say goodbye to Alexandria leaving. Above all, do not fool yourself – call it a dream, a trick of the ear; do not indulge in such vain hopes. Like one prepared, like a courageous man who once was worthy of such a city walk slowly to the window and listen with feeling, no cowardly plaints [Ice Cold in Alex, that old film] as a last pleasure before you go to the exquisite beauty of their song. Say goodbye to Alexandria leaving.
(1/96-7/7/96)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 11.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- A poem by C. P. Cavafy (1911). Text from Constantine A. Trypanis, ed., The Penguin Book of Greek Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) 582-83. The allusion to the film Ice Cold in Alex (1958) is, of course, an interpolation of my own:
Απολείπειν ο θεός Aντώνιον Σαν έξαφνα, ώρα μεσάνυχτ’, ακουσθεί αόρατος θίασος να περνά με μουσικές εξαίσιες, με φωνές - την τύχη σου που ενδίδει πια, τα έργα σου που απέτυχαν, τα σχέδια της ζωής σου που βγήκαν όλα πλάνες, μη ανωφέλετα θρηνήσεις. Σαν έτοιμος από καιρό, σα θαρραλέος, αποχαιρέτα την, την Aλεξάνδρεια που φεύγει. Προ πάντων να μη γελασθείς, μην πεις πως ήταν ένα όνειρο, πως απατήθηκεν η ακοή σου· μάταιες ελπίδες τέτοιες μην καταδεχθείς. Σαν έτοιμος από καιρό, σα θαρραλέος, σαν που ταιριάζει σε που αξιώθηκες μια τέτοια πόλι, πλησίασε σταθερά προς το παράθυρο, κι άκουσε με συγκίνησιν, αλλ’ όχι με των δειλών τα παρακάλια και παράπονα, ως τελευταία απόλαυσι τους ήχους, τα εξαίσια όργανα του μυστικού θιάσου, κι αποχαιρέτα την, την Aλεξάνδρεια που χάνεις. - Κωνσταντίνος Πέτρου Καβάφης
•
After Rimbaud Shutting her pious book, the Mother rose and kissed her little boy … what mother sees in Angel-face, his big eyes free of guile, bile and disgust tormenting the nude soul? All day long he sweated to obey; clever, quick, yet something seemed to say – little habits, tics – that this was sham. Alone in mildewed corridors, he would scream shit-fuck! clench his fists, stick out his tongue, screw up his eyes into a blood-red sun. A door opened on darkness – the backstairs, the one place he could lie and gasp for air in the dome of day a lamp hung from the night. Burnt stupid by blank waves of summer heat he hid himself inside the dank latrines; there he could breathe – sniff something that was clean. In winter, when the moon washed their back yard with icy candour, he would creep out and hide by the stream that ran inside their boundary wall; trying to see by knuckling at his eyeballs, he heard the pine-trees groan like ships at sea. Although he felt some sneaking sympathy for those trespassing kids who dropped their eyes at his approach (stink-fingers black and creased with yellow clay from damming up the creek), they turned from him like dolts and would not speak. And if his mother caught him at this game and told him off, the fact he looked ashamed fooled her into forgiveness. He was shy. Those lips were always ready with a lie. At seven he made up Westerns: wild romances set in the desert – where freedom reigns (and Dances with Wolves?); sunsets, rivers, cliffs, savannahs … Staring at naked woodcut señoritas till he turned red, he dreamt of foreign girls. So when that saucy eight-year-old, her curls bobbing, thin cotton dresses … like a squaw with soft brown eyes … came over from next door and jumped him – little beast – pulling his hair, caught underneath, he bit her on the bare bum (“wild women never put on drawers!”); then, scratched and beaten by her fists and claws, he carried the scent of her back to his room. Most of all, he feared Sundays at home, brushed clean and collared, sitting with his back straight, reading about a God he’d learnt to hate in a mould-green Bible with a faded back; the nightmares came as soon as it got dark. He loved to watch those swart, roughly-dressed men straggle home from work in the red evening ready for the distractions of the streets – his dreams were of wide prairies of ripe wheat: gold thistledown, rich scents, in the calm light of noon, till rough winds swept them out of sight. He fixated most on things that were dark and old – sitting in a cold blue room with the blinds pulled, damp dripping off the walls, mouthing the words of a story he could see inside his head full of drowned forests; leaden, ochre skies; flesh-haunted flowers; starry immensities; despair; retreat; stiff salmon-leaps; and pity! Engulfed by the vast engine-grinding city – lying in the creased haven of his bed, he bent his sails where a blind future led …
(7/91-18/5/97)
Publications:
- Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old.” Trans. Jack Ross (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 20-23.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- "Rimbaud in Flannel." Bronwyn Lloyd: Mosehouse Studio (27/5/2009)
- "Rimbaud in English." The Imaginary Museum (21/3/2026)
Notes:
- Arthur Rimbaud, “Les Poètes de sept ans” (1871). Text from Œuvres, ed. Suzanne Bernard (Paris: Garnier, 1975) 95-97:
Les poètes de sept ans À M. P. Demeny Et la Mère, fermant le livre du devoir, S’en allait satisfaite et très fière, sans voir, Dans les yeux bleus et sous le front plein d’éminences L’âme de son enfant livrée aux répugnances. Tout le jour il suait d’obéissance ; très Intelligent ; pourtant des tics noirs, quelques traits, Semblaient prouver en lui d’âcres hypocrisies. Dans l’ombre des couloirs aux tentures moisies, En passant il tirait la langue, les deux poings À l’aine, et dans ses yeux fermés voyait des points. Une porte s’ouvrait sur le soir : à la lampe On le voyait, là-haut, qui râlait sur la rampe, Sous un golfe de jour pendant du toit. L’été Surtout, vaincu, stupide, il était entêté À se renfermer dans la fraîcheur des latrines : Il pensait là, tranquille et livrant ses narines. Quand, lavé des odeurs du jour, le jardinet Derrière la maison, en hiver, s’illunait, Gisant au pied d’un mur, enterré dans la marne Et pour des visions écrasant son œil darne, Il écoutait grouiller les galeux espaliers. Pitié ! Ces enfants seuls étaient ses familiers Qui, chétifs, fronts nus, œil déteignant sur la joue, Cachant de maigres doigts jaunes et noirs de boue Sous des habits puant la foire et tout vieillots, Conversaient avec la douceur des idiots ! Et si, l’ayant surpris à des pitiés immondes, Sa mère s’effrayait ; les tendresses, profondes, De l’enfant se jetaient sur cet étonnement. C’était bon. Elle avait le bleu regard, – qui ment ! À sept ans, il faisait des romans, sur la vie Du grand désert, où luit la Liberté ravie, Forêts, soleils, rives, savanes ! – Il s’aidait De journaux illustrés où, rouge, il regardait Des Espagnoles rire et des Italiennes. Quand venait, l’œil brun, folle, en robes d’indiennes, À Huit ans, – la fille des ouvriers d’à côté, La petite brutale, et qu’elle avait sauté, Dans un coin, sur son dos, en secouant ses tresses, Et qu’il était sous elle, il lui mordait les fesses, Car elle ne portait jamais de pantalons ; – Et, par elle meurtri des poings et des talons, Remportait les saveurs de sa peau dans sa chambre. Il craignait les blafards dimanches de décembre, Où, pommadé, sur un guéridon d’acajou, Il lisait une Bible à la tranche vert-chou ; Des rêves l’oppressaient chaque nuit dans l’alcôve. Il n’aimait pas Dieu ; mais les hommes, qu’au soir fauve, Noirs, en blouse, il voyait rentrer dans le faubourg Où les crieurs, en trois roulements de tambour, Font autour des édits rire et gronder les foules. – Il rêvait la prairie amoureuse, où des houles Lumineuses, parfums sains, pubescences d’or, Font leur remuement calme et prennent leur essor ! Et comme il savourait surtout les sombres choses, Quand, dans la chambre nue aux persiennes closes, Haute et bleue, âcrement prise d’humidité, Il lisait son roman sans cesse médité, Plein de lourds ciels ocreux et de forêts noyées, De fleurs de chair aux bois sidérals déployées, Vertige, écroulements, déroutes et pitié ! – Tandis que se faisait la rumeur du quartier, En bas, – seul, et couché sur des pièces de toile Écrue, et pressentant violemment la voile ! - Arthur Rimbaud (26 mai 1871)
•
I The tower’s broken, and the leafy tree which shaded all the spirals of my mind has withered up. How can I hope to find the same again, lost on this trackless sea? Death, you reached out that day so easily to choke my love to dust; left life behind. No earthly empire, clout of any kind – gold, precious stones – will give it back to me. And if Fate wants to tell me my worst fears were always justified, what can I say but sorry? Do, but bow to hide my tears? Life can look fine from far enough away, but losing in one morning seven years of tenderness, is quite a price to pay! II Diana standing naked in a pool of ice-cold water, was no sweeter sight to an impetuous, misguided fool than that young surfie, tan against beach-white I caught rinsing her togs out in a spring wrapped only in a towel, her long hair light and free as air; which left me shivering in noonday heat with amorous longing. III I’ve watched so many sexy girls walk by only to have them fade beside the one who drains their beauty from them like the sun swallowing up the stars in a blue sky. Love comes to me to whisper urgently: When she appears your troubles have begun; farewell stability, welcome abjection – passions that will make your old life die. If Nature took the light away from heaven, green grass from earth, cool breezes from the air, from human beings gifts of speech and reason, made deep-sea fish and currents disappear, the giving of that body to corruption would still inspire a more profound despair.
(4/12/96-1/1/97)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 12-15.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Franceso Petrarca, Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta (c.1374), nos cclxix, lii & ccxviii. Text from Canzoniere, ed. Gianfranco Contini and Daniele Ponchiroli (Torino: Einaudi, 1968): 71, 280 & 340:
Canzoniere 269 Rotta è l'alta colonna e 'l verde lauro che facean ombra al mio stanco pensero; perduto ò quel che ritrovar non spero dal borrea a l'austro, o dal mar indo al mauro. Tolto m'ài, Morte, il mio doppio thesauro, che mi fea viver lieto et gire altero, et ristorar nol pò terra né impero, né gemma orïental, né forza d'auro. Ma se consentimento è di destino, che posso io piú, se no aver l'alma trista, humidi gli occhi sempre, e 'l viso chino? O nostra vita ch'è sí bella in vista, com perde agevolmente in un matino quel che 'n molti anni a gran pena s'acquista! * 52 Non al suo amante piú Dïana piacque, quando per tal ventura tutta ignuda la vide in mezzo de le gelide acque, ch'a me la pastorella alpestra et cruda posta a bagnar un leggiadretto velo, ch'a l'aura il vago et biondo capel chiuda, tal che mi fece, or quand'egli arde 'l cielo, tutto tremar d'un amoroso gielo. * 218 Tra quantunque leggiadre donne et belle giunga costei ch'al mondo non à pare, col suo bel viso suol dell'altre fare quel che fa 'l dí de le minori stelle. Amor par ch'a l'orecchie mi favelle, dicendo: Quanto questa in terra appare, fia 'l viver bello; et poi 'l vedrem turbare, perir vertuti, e 'l mio regno con elle. Come Natura al ciel la luna e 'l sole, a l'aere i vènti, a la terra herbe et fronde, a l'uomo et l'intellecto et le parole, et al mar ritollesse i pesci et l'onde: tanto et piú fien le cose oscure et sole, se Morte li occhi suoi chiude et asconde.
•
After Apollinaire
It’s Spring let’s walk out Alison
the woods are lovely though those chooks
are cackling in the yard
the sun
is not ashamed of sex
the folded sheets are red with dawn
Mars and Venus have returned
They’re kissing with open mouths
in front of a still-virgin bed
of roses
where a rout
of nymphs and satyrs dances nude
Come my love-sickness inspires
the flowers that spring at every turn
the horned god pipes with
antic fire
the bullfrogs sing in tune
the force of nature is desire
(12/86)
Publications:
- Guillaume Apollinaire. Aubade. Trans. Jack Ross. Illustration by Mark Haddon (Edinburgh: Drummond Press, 1987).
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- A Good Handful: Great New Zealand Poems about Sex. Ed. Stu Bagby. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2008. 20-21.
Notes:
- Guillaume Apollinaire, “La Chanson du mal-aimé” (1903). Text from Œuvres poétiques, ed. Marcel Adéma & Michel Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard, 1965): 49:
Aubade C'est le printemps viens-t'en Pâquette Te promener au bois joli Les poules dans la cour caquètent L'aube au ciel fait de roses plis L'amour chemine à ta conquête Mars et Vénus sont revenus Ils s'embrassent à bouches folles Devant des sites ingénus Où sous les roses qui feuillolent De beaux dieux roses dansent nus Viens ma tendresse est la régente De la floraison qui paraît La nature est belle et touchante Pan sifflote dans la forêt Les grenouilles humides chantent
•
We’re eating them in Kaitaia, In Nelson and the Bluff …DON’T SAY: “We’re eating them!” NON DITE: MangiamoliSAY: “My heart.” DITE: Il mio cuoreDON’T SAY: “His favourite pastime is Bluff!” NON DITE: Il suo passatempo preferito è BluffSAY: “We’re sentimental.” DITE: Siamo sentimentaliDON’T SAY: “Taking them up the arse is not enough!” NON DITE: Metteveli nel culo non è abbastanzaSAY: “Jim’s interesting to read.” DITE: Jim è interessante da leggereDON’T SAY: “My six rubber pricks are eating too!” NON DITE: Ho sei cazzi di gomma che mangiano ancoraSAY: “NZ is never alone.” DITE: La NZ non è mai da solaDON’T SAY: “He’s hung like you!” NON DITE: Gli tira come a teSAY: “Two strong and savage.” DITE: Due forte e selvaggioDON’T SAY: “He came in my sauce!” NON DITE: È venuto nella mia salsaSAY: “Lettuce–impressions.” DITE: Lattuga–impressioniDON’T SAY: “I prefer tongue to onions!” NON DITE: Preferisco la lingua alle cipolleSAY: “Delicate sesame tastes.” DITE: Gusti delicati di sesamoDON’T SAY: “We’re eating them between meals!” NON DITE: Mangiamoli tra i pastiSAY: “In a special diet.” DITE: In una dieta specialeDON’T SAY: “She comes on like Wellington!” NON DITE: Quella chiava come WellingtonSAY: “We’re eating enthusiast.” DITE: Mangiamo un’esaltataDON’T SAY: “I wallowed like a street!” NON DITE: Ho goduto come una stradaSAY: “We’re eating a bit tired.” DITE: Mangiamo un po’ stancoDON’T SAY: “When they show him a bird in the stand!” NON DITE: Quando le mostrano un uccello s’incazzaSAY: “We’re sure original.” DITE: Siamo molto originaliDON’T SAY: “When they suck his world–famous!” NON DITE: Quando gli succhiano il rinomatoSAY: “Big Mac impulsive.” DITE: Big Mac impulsivoDON’T SAY: “I saw her take it like you!” NON DITE: L’ho vista prenderlo come teSAY: “It’s true.” DITE: È veroDON’T SAY: “When I have done doo!” NON DITE: Quando avrò fatto dooSAY: “When I’m mature.” DITE: Quando sarò maturaFORSE NON È LA RAI …
(7/7/97)
Publications:
- Tongue in Your Ear 3 (1997): 66-67.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Lei [She]:Er [He]:Mi piacciono le donne … I like women.Du liebst die Männer / die Frauen … You like men / Women don’t like you. You don’t like men / Women like you.Penso che a tutte le donne piacciano le altre … I think all women do, but few have the courage to admit it to themselves.Few women do. Those few are only too anxious to admit it.Mi piace spiare. Mi piace essere l’osservatrice … I like spying, watching other people’s erotic games.You’d like to be spied on, open for that discriminating voyeur.Mi piace tentare. Mi piace sapere che il maskio è frustrato davanti a una donna che lo attrae … I like to tease. I like seeing a guy frustrated by the girl who turns him on.You like being teased and tormented by the men who turn you on?Mi piace essere usata dal mio maskio come oggetto di piacere, mentre in realtà lui desidera un’altra. I like being used as a sex-object by my man while he’s fantasising about someone else.You don’t like being used as a sex-object while he fantasises about someone else.Mi piace che una donna possa far eccitare un uomo senza quasi rendersene conto … I like it that a woman can excite a man without even noticing.I like it that a woman can excite a man without even noticing.Mi piace istigare, far eccitare un maskio e abbandonarlo … I like to be the aggressor, to turn a guy on, then leave him hangingWell, I’d prefer you submissive, unquestioning. You know the sort of thing …
(5/10/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- These two macaronics, "Biliingual Recipe for Big Macs" & "Sig.na Greta Eta vs. Sigmund Freud", consist of variations on found English and Italian texts composed according to set rules.
I
“Nice to see the big ones tumble,” Keed
(a quote from Archie comics) – who’d have thought
you’d ever need
reminding? All those rants
against the Estate of Marriage ... now you’re caught
despite yourself; and lo, as a hart pants
for cooling streams, so pants thy heart for – Janet.
Let’s start again. A sample invocation
includes a litany of household things:
Raise high the roofbeams
(repopulate the nation!)
Burn sandalwood and myrrh
till all eyes sting
(the poets sing).
Or ... “Cathay Pacific tends its Eastern flight,
747s in rows, their wings surrounded
by bearded lions, ginseng gardens, snuff” ... but
no catalogue can ever be enough
to give the sense of airports late at night
when everyone’s gone home, the halls abandoned
to visitors bewildered by the light.
______________
Another beginning. Stéphanie desires
a child;
like Kevin Costner’s “Bodyguard,”
the father’s all that he was
– meek and mild:
Flash pour le jour Flash for the night
Flash pour la nuit Flash for the day;
sans mise au point what’s going on
je vis ma vie it’s hard to say,
les yeux plantés I keep my eyes
dans les étoiles: fixed on the stars:
ça passe ou ça casse. let the world go past.
Flash pour l’amour Flash for the light
Flash pour la vie Flash for your love,
j’aime pas les films slow-motion films
au ralenti are rather trite,
change les couleurs the time has come
je parle à toi: to change your life:
le cœur en bataille. look into your heart.
______________
And now your invitation has arrived.
I feel like a turkey, scribbling all this mess.
But that’s okay
– I’ll still be by your side
when Panic whispers “scram,”
Discretion “yes”
(with inappropriate facetiousness).
II
A drama of locations: here
we visit fifty dreams a night.
No sooner said than sounded: there
a moving head obscures the light.
I’ve heard that ravens flock in pairs
but do they? Evidence required.
No witness has come forward – fear
of lying? Moving hands get tired.
No further prelude to my dream:
I lay in Bruntsfield, all alone.
The buses thundered by the room
outside, on shining streets of stone.
The keening of the crossing came
to keep me company, below ...
I found myself inside a plane,
took over the controls, and flew
north over mountains, Stirling, Scone,
to Gartmore – Gabriela’s home.
I knew my love was there below,
so swooped into a bed of stone.
You stood upon the boundary line,
and as I watched, I saw you grow
a coat of struts and ailerons
until you too spread wings and flew ...
(24/2/93)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
died in the Pyrenees, 30th May 1996
That time that we sat waiting in your hallway
(it seemed for hours) because we couldn’t turn
the key,
that time in Paris,
we knew you would return.
Mon papa, il est mort,
il est tombé dans un trou.
She said to me, said Megan,
5 years old.
Mon papa n’est pas beau.
Breaking for cover in the frozen woods
having led us astray for miles (me, Robin, Rufus
and Elisa)
you ran so fast
we almost lost you then.
It’s not as if you care
under all those flowers. I almost cried myself
when I saw them. Something felt so raw.
Salut, Good wishes. I’ll be seeing you
no doubt.
I hope it all works out.
Goodbye.
(6/7/96)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
born 6th March, 1997
I – Murdo Seafarer
Sea and islands … rock … something else there:
a crib, a croft; above it the pale air
of summer.
Once I climbed Stac Pollaidh –
you too will scale that spider-ridge one day.
Sandstone flecks off cliffs here; every storm
brings down more spoil: tree-roots clinging to warm,
friable soil.
They cling in vain.
Sooner or later, everyone feels pain.
I’ve never seen your islands: Lewis, Uist,
the ice-blue sea, the puffin-haunted cliffs –
Murdo Seafarer.
Some day soon
we’ll walk the stubborn fields that guard Polbain.
II – Janet, Gartmore
Lake of Menteith – we took the boat across
and walked around the island: an old church
in ruins, and a wooden dock.
We sat there for a time, spoke little –
Los muertos abren los ojos •
A los que viven. Yes. The dead
open the eyes of the living. You were right.
Once I talked you hoarse, in Arden
St., as my life self-destructed.
You sobered me with that mild West Coast voice.
I see you in the Meadows, pacing, now,
Proud Janet – immaculate somehow …
III – Haikus for Keed
Simplicity,
then wit, then
pithiness – now anything
will do …
ken?
I’m sorry.
This comes of
scribbling prose. I live
by a volcano,
too.
(10/5/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Renounce the defective drum,
the curtain of incoherences;
no longer lie alone
and lost, in fear, defenceless.
The heat of the Bay no more
will thunder in from above.
No need to bolt the door
against ineffectual love.
Kind Katies’ bargain sales
no longer will stock your shelves;
no more Koala tales
pursue divergent selves.
I look into the eyes
of the Egyptian girl
hanging upon my wall;
funny, they seem the same:
delicate, poised to fall,
with an eternal gaze.
(18/4/91)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- Here After. Living with Bereavement: Personal Experiences and Poetry. Edited by Stu Bagby. ISBN 0-473-06399-9. 9 Daphne Harden Lane, Albany, Auckland: Antediluvian Press, 2000. 37.
•
Eastern gable roofs expecting rain in the summer of all time, surmount the yellow fields of David, disenchant the vast discoloured chimney of the grain. This tumulus creates alternatives, in the summer of his reign King Camelford rode hounds to horn throughout the wood; his brachet fell, his grave demanded lives. The summer of the boxwood cross and owl, three lines of landscape, watercolour-marked in blue – where William Godwin walked the dog obliges nature with a howl.
(12/5/81)
Publications:
- Tango, “a literary rage”. Auckland University Literary Handbook 1982. Ed. David Eggleton. Auckland: Auckland University Students’ Association, 1982. 14.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
I question this impoverishment of time, the faces overlooking ancient walls; dry caves contain no echo, pigeons climb the bricked-up cliff from which the echo falls. Performance is a parody, the moon erases mercy from its dry regard – Isis, Mithras, Cybele, Sol – the tune is similar, the unawakening hard.
(16/4/81)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
The trees are certainly
polite enough – there, and discreetly green
(in keeping with the season), and the grass,
and trees, and sky, and sheep ...
and beans.
Inside a just-ploughed field
we all sat down
and ate our picnic – grass-fronds stained
with spit
(or fertiliser), spiders, sunsilk, brown
forgotten things. Were you there, Mistress?
“And, as we looked up,
we saw the path led on
to further vistas.”
that the brimming cup
of wine, the bread
were undecided
whether to go on
or to turn back, divided.
(10/7/88)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- A frequent theme in Chinese poetry, most famously in a verse by Li Po (701-762).
•
Having paid my car-tax, stumbled on cafés
throughout the day,
I rest (my trousers down) in one more bed.
Inventories are good – at least they settle
the problem of what’s going to plague my head.
A copy, there, of Olson’s poems;
here – an Irish pound.
what light from yonder window br
parchment speaks
to many:
“the phoenix is the prey of envious beaks’”?
The flowers of summer sample my abode
and draw back stricken. Not so bad, I’d say,
(but feel it falter);
here is the nerve-centre,
here the root of what goes on by day.
Maximus was right. We need a polis:
a city of just thinkers (in the rain?
a snowstorm? heatwave?
– fighting off mad tourists?);
resolving to buy Selfridges again.
(29/7/87)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems (1983), a modern American verse epic.
•
Last night the raindrops tapped upon my window
till, looking out, I saw you were not there.
My thoughts, like the Inchcolm grasses, are turned to grey …
(10/8/89)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Inchcolm is an island in the Firth of Forth.
•
We built a man of slates, and after years, revisited, the rock had grown a face. (… The lake dissects bird-craniums; tree-roots wrestle midden-stones for space.) We counted on the winter to preserve us. Spring runoff leaves no craquelure to trace.
(12/6/81-18/9/97)
Publications:
- Spin 31 (1998): 45.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
- Bird Skeleton. The Imaginary Museum (21/5/17)
•
This morning, early, sat by Number One
your spoon dipped in the bowl to give me more
(fruit, I mean) ... the honey was before
when we were first awake – naked, alone.
You greet grandparents on the telephone
– “are you sleeping with him?” – with touching candour
(yes) – “Oh no!” – (We hardly sleep at all):
a tangle of showers, sheets; your skin my own.
And so, to add to Chris (Lise), Petrarch’s
Laura, Spenser, Dante, voici Marianne:
quick with a knife to quarter apples, more
fair than bombast (caught from Berryman)
who took from Shakespeare, Hopkins – fathers all
for a sprinter born in Atalanta’s tracks.
(6/5/90)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- John Berryman’s 1940s sonnet-sequence, first published in full in 1968, describes an affair with “Chris” (renamed Lise, for discretion’s sake, in the original edition).
•
Your cunt tells me your candour, pulse, the tide just like your mouth held wide My in-built barometer is fleshly too: fluffs up, tall-boy, red-breast when caressed Slim bodies come to slab, calcium-trim bones lose their grip, taut figures slip the flesh plunders its own bronze kingdom, cannot hinder it joining, joyous, yet
(27/2/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Strange winter. Walking her home in the snow
through Marchmont, Morningside,
did Debbie tell me
she saw red, staring faces
inches above her face, when she woke up?
I told her about the wolves – yes,
running barefoot, hairy
through pine forests
in an old dream. I mated
with them (sharp pleasure); did I tell her that?
Home from a party … chivalrous? Harmless.
Miles out of my way
– slushed granite –
felt like lying down
to freeze. But didn’t. Home around three a.m.
(29/4/97)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s 1995 film of Jean Giono’s novel Le hussard sur le toit (1951) was entitled in English “The Horseman on the Roof.” This is an alternative translation.
- Marchmont and Morningside are two districts in Edinburgh.
•
I A tongue of wood points down beside the railings – conduit for rain perhaps, or maybe sinker for some titanic fishhook in the sky. The pattern on the concrete speaks of silence – the growth of moss, the crack -ing of the stones. We stand here by ourselves not prey to fishers (or gods, or spirits) – fuckers to a man. And as the graduand assumes her gown of office, does she feel the pain of parting? Does it link her to that eternal mark-down in the sky? II A pitiful excuse to drag in something that’s sordid. Dragons – id; the ego is the king full of false errands. Princess in a noose is eros (thanatos is best). The warrior adds up to “Look, no hands!” The dreamwork claims the rest.
(29/7-4/8/89)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
Notes:
- The title of A. A. Brill’s 1914 translation of Sigmund Freud’s Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens (1904).
•
Transitions – sitting on a bus
in Scotland, talking to Ali Lum
about a bus (horse-drawn) in London:
irascible John Payne
upstairs collating copies of
The Thousand and One Nights.
Fighting the rip at Muriwai,
discoloured spume, impossible
to mount that soft sand rise;
or else a Brussels street:
a coin to light a candle in
the Church of the Sablon.
And now the electronic box
which sings to me (“Welcome
to Windows”) has left me
– like my other squeeze … the heart of me,
my Queen of Heaven. Blasphemy? Just
static: Modem not responding.
(12/11/96)
Publications:
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
Rubbing wife’s back in bath of ivory, setting out incense sticks for the rich dead – black-and-white cat reclines at our bed’s head, books and inkstones lie about the study. Which of us cares to hear the cuckoo’s sorry for waking us before the dawn’s first red? “Today perhaps the winter’s come,” you said, wrapped-up and warm against the season’s flurry.
(24/4/93-17/4/97)
Publications:
- Killing Time (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997): 16.
- Spin 28 (1997): 43.
- City of Strange Brunettes. Poems by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-05446-9 (Auckland: The Pohutukawa Press, 1998): 9-10.
•
