Wow
Wow
Bill Manhire
Dedication
For my long-haul editors, Fergus Barrowman and Michael Schmidt
Contents
- Title Page
- Dedication
- 1
- Huia
- Untitled
- Also
- The Armchair Traveller
- South
- Side Trips
- Names
- A Really Nice Trip
- Letter from the New Place
- Sorrow
- Woodwork
- Someone Was Burning the Forest
- Warm Ocean
- Falling Asleep
- The Terrible Singers
- 2
- Noah
- Angels
- The Angry God
- He Loved Her Lemonade Scones
- Breakfast
- The Mysterious Twin
- The Kaffir Lime Is Having a Bad Day
- Isolation Notes
- Mean Neptune
- To Be Concluded
- Earthquake Practice
- Conference Dinner
- Lives of the Poets
- Langholm
- The Lazy Poet
- The Deerculler’s Wife
- What I’m picking up when I’m out and about
- Weather
- 3
- Discontinued Product
- After Lockdown
- Incidental
- Halls
- Exhibition
- The Sailor
- Knots
- Our Teacher
- The Sky
- Change Nothing
- Like
- The Smile
- Wow
- Polly
- Reverse Ovid
- After Surgery
- Little Prayers
- Copyright
they’ve cleared away
the clearings
1
Huia
I was the first of birds to sing
I sang to signal rain
the one I loved was singing
and singing once again
My wings were made of sunlight
my tail was made of frost
my song was now a warning
and now a song of love
I sang upon a postage stamp
I sang upon your coins
but money courted beauty
you could not see the joins
Where are you when you vanish?
Where are you when you’re found?
I’m made of greed and anguish
a feather on the ground
+
I lived among you once
and now I can’t be found
I’m made of things that vanish
a feather on the ground
14
Untitled
This book about extinct birds is heavier than any bird:
heavier than the dark bird eating my heart,
page after page of abandoned wings.
I lift it up and sit it on my lap
and listen to it purring.
15
Also
my mother cries all day
because soon it will be the world’s last day
imagine being a baby again!
I can’t do that but I must try
+
also: my dog’s bark
is the whole of the colour blue
it is ice rising out of the sea
and all because he is pleased to see me
16
The Armchair Traveller
Excuse me if I laugh.
The roads are dark and large books block our path.
The air we breathe is made of evening air.
The world is longer than the road that brings us here.
The necklace is a carving, not a kiss.
You run towards the one you can’t resist.
At first she edges backwards, then she stalls.
Now every sentence needs another clause.
The road goes off through willows, then it winds.
Is that the famous temple over there?
Why are the people round about so undefined?
Why must they kiss then disappear?
Time now to let the story take its course,
just settle back and let the driver drive.
Bliss is it late at night to be alive,
learning to yield, and not to strive.
17
South
There it goes again, the heart,
wayward and lost on the streets
of K—, a city I’ll never visit;
and there it was maybe 50 years ago
on some intergalactic mission
a thousand years in the future;
or back here just this morning
in the cold impossible cold,
falling into step beside Shackleton,
whose body beats on through the cold
for as always it is filled
with boats and birds.
18
Side Trips
1.
We travelled to the town of K—
where all the citizens insist on weeping.
No one who visits there can offer comfort.
You see, the schoolbus departed many years ago,
now there are only parents.
2.
I like the cloud at the top of Shingle Road,
the way it makes my feelings settle.
Sheep can still find grass there,
grazing among a thousand stones.
Each stone was once the shadow of a bird.
3.
God lend you strength, says the too eventful day,
soon you will be home among your loved ones,
soon you will know the beauty of the earth.
19
Names
Yes, the waterfall is beautiful.
In days gone by this place was called
Where Jennifer Ate Her Final Meal and Afterwards She Slept.
These days we call it Jingle Bells because, well, you know,
our parents always liked that song.
20
A Really Nice Trip
We went up Pleasant Valley.
After which we came back down to Pleasant Flat.
Then we went all the way out to Pleasant Point.
It was a really nice trip.
21
Letter from the New Place
I sleep in a house that is not my house,
not my roof, not my rafters,
here at the far end
of the twisting tail of a land
where only a bucket of gravel will break my fall.
All morning filling out forms
half listening to the sea that storms
and stamps and stammers
learning to pick grapes and apples
learning to read a hundred useless things –
I want to see that, I want to see this –
all the problems, all the damage.
Did you hear what happened to
our path of corrugated iron across the mud –
blown away I’m sorry,
blown away alas,
once it was your mother’s roof.
Now I walk the long way round
to see the man who says
Are you happy
Are you happy with your house
Are you pregnant once again?
Old words, new words,
a few moments of understanding,
and always quickly lost.22
You belong to the new place
and I belong to the new place
where I believe we will one day miss each other.
Also the old place,
also the old place too –
the sails and the almost sand and water,
all the terrifying winds.
23
Sorrow
I walk around a lot.
I apologise to all and sundry.
I look for pleasure in my mind.
Away with sorrow!
I write this on a page.
I call it out to passers-by.
Repeat a thought a thousand times
and it will live forever.
The god stands behind me
and coughs politely.
You never see him
but he makes himself known.
He says sad is sometimes beautiful.
He says he has a plan for me.
He asks me to imagine
the brain of a dying child.
So hard!
He says I should learn to weep more often.
He thinks this would be helpful.
Each day I am his precious one.
24
Woodwork
Children are building their teacher a coffin.
There it is in the paper, somewhere in Holland,
a good plain coffin made of many parts,
and two of the children
call each day and talk to the teacher
to keep the teacher posted. Is she happy?
She is ill but quite contented.
What will they give her to take with her
into the earth at last, or across those borders
where only teachers travel? There is dark energy there
and multiplication tables, and many children are in a room
with chisels and planes and spirit levels.
They must be making something wonderful.
Everything needs to be straight.
I made a boat, a tie-rack, a wooden spoon.
The boat sat on a mantelpiece in several different houses.
It was happy with its yellow funnel,
somewhere it is sailing. And everywhere children
are waving and working hard.
They are building their teacher a coffin.
25
Someone Was Burning the Forest
We did not know why the child was crying,
nor why he stood bare-shouldered at the window.
How had he come by those skimpy feathers?
The mother had fallen from the tower
a moment after she began to answer. I looked around
and there were many towers, also other bodies.
Now I was on the ground myself. I could hear
the child but no longer see him. Perhaps
he was still aloft. The towers were dissolving
yet surely there were trees. It was dark now
but I knew there must be many bodies.
I would need to climb to see where we might go.
26
Warm Ocean
Someone says lonely let’s go for a stroll
someone says not now
someone says it was never about the money
someone says what then
someone says a few basic rules
anger desire compassion
anger desire compassion
and then there’s a great silence
in which we all go for a stroll
clifftop ocean a few swimmers far below
+
Old women are swimming in the ocean
there’s classical music going on
so many heads bobbing and nodding
where is my lover, where is my lover
the women cry, bobbing and nodding
and they all take up the cry
and violins you know
where is my lover, where is my lover
and now the small girl is asleep
+
Three old men late afternoon
last ones left in the water
come on admiral! says one
but it’s not clear which one 27
or who to – maybe us?
they want us to watch them don’t they no
they want us to go away no
they want us to set a net
and spend our last days hauling in
+
Long bench where men sat once
stubborn wood
old driftwood trunk
before the vows and boasts
before the oars demanding water
before the killings
before the killings and the weepings
before the poet’s song
before the later tales about the killings
the ones they made from fish and cigarettes
+
Long stretch of wood with nothing there
except you know patches of drifting grain
maybe a piece of cloud maybe a tiny stream
a few books
and on the stream-bed the stones knocking together
you can hear them clock
when you turn off the noise of the world
there they are going clock cluck
clock cluck clock like time itself
a busy creature deep below the surface
each time you put your ear to the timber 28
+
Well anyway I think I prefer the inland forest
birds with their dings and dongs and dusky wings
making some beauty
making all of us shiver
even when crying there’s a sail a sail
telling us over and over yes and forever
that the ghost can’t stand the graveyard
+
Ancient man clad in bells
he jumps and terrifies the children
the adults too clang clang
we wonder a bit why we came here
something on the radio perhaps
or maybe the kids had heard it somewhere
anyway here we are yelling at him you fucking
fucking cunt we yell and why
have you come here clanger-cunt! as he runs
into the forest same old forest
followed by all our women
chirping and cheeping and chasing
off once again to hide among the birds
+
The where-am-I bird is singing again
deep in the woods the bush the forest
people lost in the undergrowth
swearing at each other as you do 29
as you mostly don’t when you’re hunting
and now the where-am-I bird
is reshining its song
up-in-the-sky up-in-the-sky
everyone looking up high now of course
taking aim and lost for an answer
gone-now-for-good
and now just to settle everything down
the bagarup bird is squawking again
on the general’s desk by the caged canary
by the potted daisy oh there’s the telephone
+
The god rises up out of the river
so we make the temple on the riverbank
big white flowers like plates we might eat from
then the bodies the blindfolds the blur
and rain puzzled by its own prosperity
one and two and three and others
blessing the coming and the going
the generous bodies hauled high
as blood weeps out of eyes and ankles
the shame and plaque and tangle
so the world will be better now god help us
now that the god is finally helping
+
The huge man carries his tiny candle
he stumbles forward picking people up
then yes tossing them aside 30
his hand is huge, all handle
he gasps behind his tongue behind his smile
walks into the water apparently
and soon he is remote like a ripple
like something sighing
like the troubled echo of a sigh
and someone comes up to us and says
really to anyone who’ll listen
how could he come along and leave like that
not even buying a ticket
+
Like possible footprints on the ocean floor
possibly there possibly not
that’s the way her memory paces
to and fro to and fro
and who exactly are you anyway
to and fro with your talk of a kiss gone missing
and your all in all and your wherewithal
and all of those things that aren’t material
that’s not what we want from an answer
no we never wanted anything like that
maybe snow melting and frost in a field
maybe sand that shuffles aside when she whispers
+
Don’t play the music don’t play the music
says the man
who walks around town saying
over and over don’t play the music 31
all songs being made
as we know from things that hurt
ice that melts flames that fall from the sky
yes all of that and more
all of that and more
and the father goes on singing
long after his daughter leaves the church
+
Last night in the world’s last city
no one much about
though here you are again turning a corner
and there are the abandoned cruise ships
just imagine
no one lives there now
and here you are again
stepping around small fires
it’s all moonlight and shipwrecks these days
kids and parents jumping off the wharf
the orchestra breaking up the ballroom
to make warm ocean anyone could swim in
32
Falling Asleep
I lift the small boy out of the sandpit
where he might easily have slept
till dawn. He is the first of his kind
or the last, it is hard to be sure.
Soon the oldest pair
will be taking the floor,
the girl with the wistful stare, the boy
with the tumble-down hair. What
will their lives be, singly or together,
we all probably wonder. They don’t wonder,
and I don’t really either, so now they dance
and I have again disguised myself
as a sad man in his sixties. What a strange
and puzzling person! Please introduce me!
I am running around inside the sad commotion.
33
The Terrible Singers
The boy and the girl sing to each other.
Home is a word that floats above the trees.
I know that voice, sings the girl.
I know that song, sings the boy.
They are both ashamed of their parents.
2
37
Noah
I abandoned the bad band
and joined the good band: I thought
that we would flood the world with music.
The first rains came and soon the trees
were somehow growing out of water –
we travelled through the forests
by canoe.
Eventually we built our boat,
the famous one with windows and the deck
of many roofs. Things that once were mountains
sailed on by, and then the whole of the world
had gone, and everything was sky. And yes
I brought the instruments aboard – too late for some,
it’s true. As for the animals, I never really knew.
Someone else did that. In the end we ate a few.
38
Angels
They are not always awake.
Sometimes they step out of their own light
into the world’s great darkness
where I believe they rest and pray.
They still try to imagine a better world,
they want us to bring our neighbours
gifts of calm. Well, they are angels. This time
they have made a children’s playground,
and are climbing to the top of the tallest slide.
Watch me, they cry, watch me! So now
God must sigh and shake them awake.
No more of this, he says, no more.
Later you can hear the angels chattering:
I thought I was a giant sail,
the wind filled me with flight,
I wore my wings again – yet it was all a dream!
39
The Angry God
He says you and whose army
he lies around and laughs at our mistakes
he says his son is dead to him now
he says he never really had a son
also he hates being on the team bus
he’s going to ditch his manager
he certainly will not do that fucking karaoke
he’s taking his fists back to the piano
the girl wasn’t even his type
he is not that person anymore
40
He Loved Her Lemonade Scones
They fell in love between the end of the footie season
and the start of shearing. Sheep gazed, bewildered.
The paddocks stretched up into the hills,
mostly scrub and a few old stands of bush.
‘Now listen here,’ he said, and that was it really.
41
Breakfast
I had no trouble with anything
till he started making the toast.
42
The Mysterious Twin
There is only one of me, she says,
but we all know there are two.
She says she is an only child
but we know full well she is not.
Her mysterious twin is out there
doing something in the garden.
I can’t see her from the window.
Where is she exactly? Then when I turn back
she has put aside her knitting,
she has switched off the television
because the volume knob is broken.
She probably turned it up too hard.
But as always she is lucky. Her mysterious twin
will come back inside quite soon
and fix it.
43
The Kaffir Lime Is Having a Bad Day
I was made of clusters.
I functioned in secret ways.
I called out in a voice
I did not recognise as my own.
That was one way to do it.
You learn not to trust people.
You want the whole thing to finish.
I went through the door.
No colour in the great outdoors,
just the cold attacking wind.
The sparrow spread its tiny wings.
Oh it was opening up the sky.
44
Isolation Notes
Ivan the Terrible eats most of a mouse
wasps and flies fight over the rest
now only the tail is left
+
The small boy’s ancient voice:
when he sings
when he sings
the neighbour’s figs
tremble
even the tui trembles
+
The Queen is hunkering down
Philip is high in his helicopter
Candy goes yap yap yap
The ice rink is covered in corpses
The Queen is really quite feisty
Candy goes yap yap yap
Philip is high in his helicopter
Candy goes yap yap yap
The ice rink is covered in corpses 45
+
Hospitals and schools, beds and desks
all that courage
all those corridors
+
Blue
for the blue Pacific
an angel gave me this crayon
I think I glimpsed
his wing
+
till one day maybe nothing is left,
just a boat out on the horizon …
still searching for Icarus
foolish boy who went within
two metres of the sun
+
all the love, all the whatnot
+
& now not even the tail
46
Mean Neptune
About 60 per cent of my son sits under the sea.
He is still able to talk back to me
but he cannot run away from home.
No, he cannot roam.
I sit him on my knee
and listen to him groan.
His hair is made of foam.
His brain is scenery.
Mountains are on his mind
but always ill-defined.
They fail to shine –
excessive wilding pine.
Excessive everything!
Too much this and that!
The surface of the sea goes stormy,
when it should be flat.
+
no more snarling
no more of that my darling
+
As for my disobedient daughter,
she must stay entirely underwater.
47
To Be Concluded
I used to love folk music
though I didn’t know any folk.
You can’t escape the political air,
not much oxygen to spare
not much oxygen to spare.
Eventually the songs wore out their welcome,
they never stopped winking at me.
This is how I came to prefer
the steady gaze of silence. Yes
I was sick of the troublemaking world,
I wanted life to be useful
like a piece of furniture that accurately
describes itself. I had this thought, you see,
and I wanted to write it down.
48
Earthquake Practice
I was thinking about the tsunami hīkoi
and how I would have to puff my way uphill
later in the afternoon
when this phone call came through from a lady
who thought I was the local cattery.
She didn’t give her name, just launched
right in. I tried to explain her mistake to her
but she talked right over me. I want
Coleslaw back at once, she said,
or I tell you there’ll be trouble.
I miss my little vegetarian!
Then she was gone. I thought:
That has to be the weirdest conversation
I’ve had for a long time,
and not really even a conversation
given I never got so much as a word in.
49
Conference Dinner
After the usual range of ill-attended papers,
and after the outings to disappointing lakes,
we all got together and ate
the last meal that Wordsworth ate.
Boiled mutton was at the heart of it.
No dessert. We all left quite a lot on our plate
because we had started with quite a lot on our plate
and we were mostly Wordsworth scholars.
The freelance biographers tucked in.
All the while – though one really shouldn’t say –
the words of ‘Kubla Khan’ kept
going through my head. Oh dear,
I thought, oh dear, oh fucking dear.
In fact the damsel with the dulcimer
got stuck in there,
and of course she is with me to this day.
50
Lives of the Poets
There was once a fellow called Pickleton
who lived alone, and do you know why?
Because he was a poet!
Strange thing, though: he may have lived alone
yet he shaved every day. Yes, I agree,
it does seem rather pointless.
I myself prefer to imagine him
in some sort of parallel universe.
A sign on his door says Pickleton the Poet
and men and women, a long line,
are waiting to ask him a question. Pickleton sits
in a large chair, one with padded arms.
Yes, perhaps there are restraints.
From time to time a question is delivered,
Pickleton quivers … and then writes something
in a little notebook, smiles to himself
(a small smile of power and contentment),
and his beard reaches
all the way down to the floor.
51
Langholm
I went quietly down the stairs
into my uncle’s butcher’s shop.
Middle of the night. Tiptoe.
The long white counter gleamed in the dark,
weighing machine at one end,
big silver till at the other.
I thought: sleeping above all that meat
can’t be good for you. A poster on the wall
showed a cow carved into its cuts. All so strange
because there wasn’t even a sausage to be seen.
A famous poet once lived in this town.
Every idea is a bad idea.
He never said that, but he should have.
52
The Lazy Poet
He writes a new haiku.
Maybe that will do?
+
But ah the mystery of things!
the quiet attentiveness a poet brings …
+
He wonders about the word ‘thicket’…
then turns on the cricket.
+
Light at an upstairs window:
the poet working late.
A disappointing over rate.
He activates the waterfall.
He activates the paperweight.
+
He reads about the loss of insects
from all of earth & air.
There might be something there.53
+
And he himself is always lost,
and at what cost?
+
Must he scratch out
all that pain again?
+
He remembers how once upon a time he wept & roared
and wept & roared
like some bewildered sailor washed ashore …
+
But anyway
rain stops play.
54
The Deerculler’s Wife
The deerculler’s wife mentions whitebait again
but even so this poem isn’t working
the hart still loves the high wood
which is mostly gone or maybe elsewhere
and turning words off at the wall does nothing
and this other poem I have just started
well it is probably drowning too but as it goes
it makes a lot of noise it yells and lows
The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!
Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!
Read the complete book free online → 🔗
Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!
Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!
Happy Reading!