Poem 245

Second poem in Folio 2 – so written two days after my 23rd birthday in the lounge of the flat in Hataitai as I settle to the idea of a life of writing, or at least a life of trying to be a writer (perhaps the same thing) …

… I’ve always liked the poignant picture this paints of the sense of isolation of someone who’s had bad news and suddenly finds themselves out of synch with a world of furious growth and midday weekday activity – their new awareness separates them from the throng forever, sharpening their sense of being alive but simultaneously giving them the impression that the human geography around them is unreal and paper-thin like the set of a play or film …

( I like the way the you doesn’t come in until the last third … this poem reflects the downtown building boom in Wellington in the eighties and also the fact that having left the Reserve Bank only the previous week I was myself abruptly no longer part of the lunchtime swarms on Lambton Quay and the Terrace … )

Against The Flow

Inside the quiet surgery
the plush chair
the doctor puts down the cold stethoscope
science
and reaches for the warm one of sympathy

outside steel clashes
against steel
hoisted placed fused
amid the spitting rivets
acetylene roar
as the skyline is gridded by hulks
and the whistles and horns of noon
draw life to the straitened streets
as if a single vast elevator
has descended
or an enormous sinuous train
slid in
behind the cardboard framework
it opens its sides

now you go down
into the struggling crowd
only you look up
at the sun like a coin of plasma
in the upended saucer of sky
only you struggle up the steps
that the crowd pours down

you cross the ancient station
behind the painted paper
the sides constrict
take your seat with a jerk
you depart for another town