Poem 143

A Wellington sonnet about time continuity and inconstancy … I loved those Shoreline 1840 signs set in the footpaths in town … this was written within that first month (September/October 1982) of sitting in the lounge of my Hataitai flat six hours a day with the table angled into a blank corner, walking around to the Roseneath Deli for a lunch break … the fact that eight out of the twenty poems I wrote in that month are still of interest to me forty years later is more than I would have expected at the time …

( this has got nice flow and rhyme, bunch of quays is good … )

Harbour Sonnet

The green sea comes choppy into the bay
rubs itself round the edge of the town
it spies on the windows reflecting the day
in the buildings that will all splinter down

it remembers the beach it touched right there
the boats that cut in to land
and sees these bigger castles here
are built in the same old sand

the sea tightens up and the sea goes slack
and slaps in the offshore breeze
not caring if it washes the mountain's back
or this bunch of billion dollar quays

the green sea cut the mountain to bay
the same blunt blade carves the city today