Poem 58

Written when I was twenty and published in Nexus the Waikato University students’ magazine (effectively self-published since I was the assistant editor) … not perfect but it has a plangent sense of alienation and nostalgia that I find trancelike …

… written from the point of view of someone trapped in a decaying orbit, this owes something to obscure NZ-written UK-produced play-for-television Salve Regina by Palmy North playwright Edward Bowman that I found myself gazing at disbelievingly one evening in my early teens (featuring Glenda Jackson no less) …

Falling

I walk out today on the planet's face
walking against the turning
walking with the yearning
and the clear hiss of radio space
but as I stroll the long green street
it's falling Russia 40,000 feet

I walked today in my high school's halls
breathing in the years
but in silence I could hear
above a thinning sky the orbiting calls
of men who cried in fear in the ever-turning heat
it's falling Russia 40,000 feet

I stood today in the pit of a shaft
stood in the black
of a night come back
and I strained for a sound I could hardly grasp
a sound like hard wind through wheat
it's falling Russia 40,000 feet

I lie tonight on a ground of steel
in my ears no tone
my eyes gone stone
around the world I fly like a wheel
and as I lay me down to sleep
I'm falling Russia 40,000 feet