Poem 552

And here we are at the end, the full landscape of Hidden Valley lies behind and around us, I hope you’ve enjoyed the ramble …

… as the subtitle indicates, from my first day in the KM Room in Menton I decided to keep a list of all the people who dropped in through the year (having been informed by previous Fellows that there would be a stream of them) and at the end of my time make a poem out of the list, which I did on my last day there … it strongly evokes for me what was a magical place and time for Michele and I personally and for me to rediscover myself as a writer …

… with much water having passed under the bridge since that lambent year this now reads like a farewell to more than just Menton … and I knew from the beginning of this project that it was going to be the last poem posted here …

( I love the shape of this, how real life closes the circle with Grace and the Fancys, the rhythm colours images and stories, how much detail is contained yet unspools easily and the way I’m finding everything seems to connect, in my own mind forming a globe with me at its hub, gleaning what all New Zealanders find on their pilgrimage to the podes – a new sense of myself … )


Thanks faithful reader for accompanying me this far … thanks to Robbie Duncan who walked with me in scrupulously recording every one of these 552 poems … and if I’m allowed to pat myself on the back – which I am because it’s my website …

how many poets do you know like this?

how many poets can flow like this?

Sunny Ghosts

(A list of visitors to the Katherine Mansfield Room 2010)


First came the Fancys
from Ontario
in my first week writing
catching the number three bus every morning
looking at the sea walking up
Ave. Katherine Mansfield
to the shed of her gardener my ceiling
her floor the terrace where she stood
to see the blue sea and the sun
lizards and snakes 

the Fancys came to the room
a wedge of spring sunlight in the door
they were the first
a few days later another Canadian
retired couple their winters so deep 
and dark they said
everyone seizes a chance to get away 
their book on the crowded history 
of this coast of poets and playwrights
had led them here to Chekhov 
one more on the list
(and didn’t she love old Anton
my neighbour turning the leaves
on the upstairs terrace)

next was Therese
whose name wasn’t Therese
but finding yourself in France
can do that for you
Michele changed places with me
some afternoons 
to listen for her own 
sunny ghosts
now in her absence 
her name everywhere
on the buildings and the streets
she’s more than ever the patron saint 
of this town for me

who knows who else arrived 
after the sleepwalking lunch hour
when I had departed and locked the gate
so they had to squint 
through the railings 
to read the plaques?

the pace picked up
two women from Wellington
connected city across the sea an Irish
couple Sydney-sider Fiona
on a cruise (Masters on Woolf
and Mansfield) two Italian women
and their dog all of us surprised to see each other
when I stepped out of the toilet

the train stopped every half hour
going to Ventimille coming from Ventimiglia
the passengers regarded me I looked at them
through the open door the trees
the platform I watched an important-looking pheasant
march the length of not long ago
in April a train leaving the sleepy shimmering gare
killed an old lady
two hundred yards down the track 
according to the Nice Matin 
Menton edition
I opened the door one day
and a startled lizard dropped his banded tail
hopping 
on the doorstep and dashed behind the chest of drawers
there were cats too sneaking and slinking
brawling in the lane and rolling in patches
of the old tiger Mrs Murry’s dust

Leslie from Devonport checks up on the KM Fellow
every year and checked up on me
strolling down from her usual apartment on Boulevard Garavan
they downsized in Auckland to make it possible
you have to decide what you want
no visitor knew my name 
(more than fine by me) 
many thought the lucky Fellow lived 
in the Villa Isola Bella and came in hopes
of strolling around that rather than a peek
in her revamped gardener’s shed 
one asked me
what time do you open?

an Italian woman ex-teacher of literature
was interested (or disappointed) to discover Katherine
married - all the ‘m’s -
Mansfield married Middleton Murry
mmm …

the Italian couple speaking no English
wife translating the plaques for her husband
while a gentle rain falls
and that was the day Jenna rocked up
from WOOFing at Alexandra’s New Zealand garden
high under the cliffs behind us Jenna 
generally worked crewing yachts but next day for a change
was off to a circus school 
in the Pyrenees

an English couple retired physicist and biochemist
asked me what I was writing and when I told them
recounted a séance where the lights
swung and the table moved
Jane came since she was staying with us
and all guests had to see the room
Ron and Judy from Otaki on their way
to Aix knew all about the other KM houses
Karori Days Bay (collect the set)
they took my photo
Moira Maeve and Flo – summer girls –
Merrian and Chris from Karehana Bay (throwing
a stone from my old house I could have rattled
their roof) were heading for Tuscany
Bill and Pauline from Christchurch were off to climb
in the Dolomites after a turn round Serre 
de la Madone in the searing sun
one more English couple
she likes to photograph cemeteries
he met the brother of James Joyce in Trieste
in 1947

Charlotte and Paul left their kids on the beach
to look inside the room she hadn’t seen
since her father wrote there
and she lived and went to school just up the rue
in ‘72 It has changed
oh yes

Hannah from the Riviera Times lost her copy 
of Katherine’s letters and journals when her bag 
was ripped off her arm in a tram
in the Nice projects
she was writing an article on why Menton
had proved so fruitful for la Mansfield
I hazarded a guess imagining ‘her upstairs’
flying into a tantrum
if she heard
Petra and Gerard at their ease in Eze
reported it had been -2 the morning
they left Wellington Enrico Berra
owned a holiday apartment up the lane
(our little stretch of the Via Julia Augusta
rampant roman road)
and was collecting the history of the neighbourhood
In his perfect English he took my number
said he’d invite me for drinks
I think it’s too wet and cold and late in the year
for that now mio amico

a little chocolate-coloured frog on the steps
after the rain who hoped if he ignored me
I’d do the same
then mosquitoes mosquitoes mosquitoes
the door had to be closed!
hiding in the fluorescent glare of the eaves sliding down the air the instant
I concentrated on what I should be doing
- watching through the window or if you were the hustling
bustling woman on the roof opposite
hanging out her washing every morning
you would have thought I’d gone mad
stalking and 
clapping
inspecting my palms for satisfying 
smears of blood

(and don’t forget
the palm outside the window
its green seed fruit
and fingers fanned against blue sky)

our friend Anne on her way back from walking 
in William Waterfield’s garden at the Clos du Peyronnet
after I’d missed the bus and missed the garden
English tourists passing in the lane
I thought Katherine Mansfield was a movie star Yeah she was
No she was a writer

the summer storm that exploded in knuckles of hail
piling like snow in the yard under x-ray flashes
of lightning driving rain under the door
in a flood that flowed behind the chest of drawers
and would have flushed out the stubby lizard 
had he still been crouched there
rewriting his tail

two couples from Auckland staying in the hills
behind Nice an English one on their way
to Chateau Vallavieille who look forward to seeing me
in the West End a soft-spoken Frenchman
and his parents he more interested in Virginia Woolf
his mother more interested in gardens
they were going home to google me
a mother and daughter from San Remo who told me
Edward Lear is buried there
as they left excited chatter by the gate
and a third Italian woman from an apartment above 
attracted by the activity
and the over-the-border voices pushes open the door
there are twenty-two apartments in the villas Louise
and Isola Bella she tells me
pronouncing authoritatively what all we Mentonnais know
already Italians 
like it here

Beth and Bruce last guests
of the summer Merryn who came four days
while we were on holiday and cleaned my tea-encrusted
cup
we were in Copenhagen when Karl and Kay 
turned up Karl jumped the fence 
to stand where he stood
in the poem he wrote to Katherine telling us later
over paella in Ave St Michele when I’m too old 
to climb over the fence
I’ll stop coming to Menton

Margaret and Rob from Remuera 
also dropped by to pay homage 
2pm 13th Sept leaving a card 
and a kiwi fridge magnet
and on Michele’s last afternoon
a young Yorkshire couple 
who’d never heard of KM 
were doing the sights in the guidebook 
but knew someone living in Christchurch 
who’d been shaken up in the earthquake always
some connection

a Cambridge foursome had friends 
they labeled for convenience 
Kiwi1 and Kiwi2
they always come to Menton out of season asked
my name 
forgot it
came back next day 
to ask again
why didn’t I say just call me
Kiwi3?

a French or German woman too nervous to come inside 
(I was more than usually unshaven)
she stared at the plaques 
interested in Katherine Mansfield?
no
her only question why did she come here? she was ill?
later a couple retired to Menton 
from Paris - Île de France they called it – 
she wrote Breakfast At Tiffany’s?

Mark and his wife New Zealanders
teaching in Saudi here ahead of a conference
in Nice
November rain pattering down on us
again that day the clang of the gate
bonjour
bonjour
parlez-vous Anglais peut-être?
he shrugs
an eloquent shrug
we stand there a moment sea sparkling 
between the buildings

in the lane the man from the Otis van
where’s No. 12?
je ne le sais
what number is this?
I shrug
an eloquent shrug

as the year dwindles down
only the stragglers
shoes rasp in the gravel 
I open the door
parlez-vous Anglais?
a little un peu de Francais mais … we are German
defeated
I leave them to it

and Grace in a hurry – the last –
on her way to Milano
who’s been coming on holiday 
here thirty years but only this one time 
sees the door open but she’s leaving 
her car is in the lane
I’m lonely now want her to stay 
and talk 
she reads Katherine in Italian 
but prefers English more people 
know about Gurdjieff than Mansfield now
he’s kind of a cult
but nobody in Menton knows about the KM Fellow nobody
knows this!
she’s headed for her car 
parked outside the gate
blocking the lane
Milano-bound over her shoulder
I come back

it’s raining today
muddy footprints cover the tiles
where I’ve hopped out and back
to the toilet
empty water bottles crowd the corner
the overflow from my upstairs neighbour’s terrace
spatters and splatters on the stones
beside the doorstep
I know when the sun comes out
it will drip for days
in half an hour I will catch the bus
and here’s the train again
with a screech of brakes
and a whirr of accompanying birds

I wrote many things here
(this is the last)
I worked well it suited me
it was mine
for a time
first came the fancies and the last to leave
was grace
flying down the steps
and through the gate to other places
other times
but see the plant in the fence corner
I fed soggy bananas to
that looked so amputated when I first arrived
is flowering its white trumpets
for the third time
‘Ma ville est un jardin’
oui vraiment

je reviens 

I come back

if not with the big brass key
to the iron gate 
then scrambling
over the railings

and if too old
for that well
I can always get Karl Stead
to give me a leg up



				              Katherine Mansfield Room, Menton, December 6, 2010