I know I find it hard to listen.

I read too much. I often need a drink.

It isn’t the world that makes us think,

it’s words that we can’t come up with.

Sure, I can work up fresh examples

and send them off to the committee.

But the poetry is in the bird. And in the pretty.

83

Reverse Ovid

Woman running across a field

with a baby in her arms …

She was once the last pine tree on Mars.

84

After Surgery

A small bird flies out of the body, out of a blink perhaps,

maybe out of the lungs. It wants words for all that’s

burning. There must be language for the dazzle of its

wings, also for what might hold in place a long and

lightly feathered scar. The bird contains a thousand

possible sounds. It sits on a branch, everywhere-at-once,

sharp shadow against the sunset, crumple of gift-wrap on

the bed, a throat as yet untuned, practising the names of

things it might one day return with. You lift your hand

a little, almost to wave. Twig and bandage, says the bird;

possibly lilac, possibly rain.

87

Little Prayers

15 March 2019

Let the closing line be the opening line

Let us open ourselves to grief and shame

Let pain be felt and be felt again

May our eyes see when they cease crying

Let the closing line be the opening line

Let the seas storm, let the hills quake

Let us inspect what makes us ache

Let there be tasks we undertake

Let us make what we can make

When the seas storm and the hills shake

May the rivers and lakes and mountains shine

May every kiss be a coastline

May we sing once again for the first time

May the children be home by dinnertime

May the closing line be an opening line

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful thanks to the editors of nzpoetryshelf.com, PN Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, Sport, the School Journal and Turbine | Kapohau, where a number of these poems first appeared.

Every effort has been made by the publisher to reproduce the formatting of the original print edition in electronic format. However, poem formatting may change according to reading device and font size.

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Carcanet Press Ltd, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ.

This new eBook edition first published in 2020.

Text copyright © Bill Manhire, 2020. The right of Bill Manhire to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988; all rights reserved.