I lay you down
and moved your dress aside
and tasted
between your thighs
the sweetest vinegars of Valparaiso.
How many hours ago
did the wind start
buffetting the skylight
filling the deckchairs
with snow?
Lying beside each other
in the same bed for years,
rubbing the soles of our feet together in winter,
nursing each other through nightmares,
you might have imagined
that what was mine was yours
and vice versa
or that what I thought
you would have thought also,
but it is countries
rubbing their feet together,
states touching states,
nations
holding each other while they dream
beyond the borders
there are so many miles
of white fields, and factories, old men
walking behind their horses in the snow,
before the outskirts of the capital, the thoroughfares
the sidestreets
and the laneways,
the eating, the talking, the watching t.v.,
people sleeping
beside each other in their beds.
Early
on the way to a meeting in Bateman�s
I glimpse a lyrebird
on the edge of the Mt Agony road
gone as soon as I notice it
I slow down
and look at the place where it entered
but there is nothing,
the bird
become dry branch, scrub-
shadow.
Later
writing this down
I wonder what part of the self it is
hides amongst language
� looking at
these words, this
page,
trying to find where I entered.
Months
come and go in the sheets
and the moons with them.
Sickness
comes and departs,
the playing
of children, lovers,
husbands and wives.
One morning
you wake
and there is blood on the sheets,
one morning it is semen,
one morning it is sweat
or tears;
one day you wake
and the bed beside you is empty
or the sheets have turned
to tissue beneath your feet
and it is time to replace them with new, thick linen
that unfolds on the mattress like wide slabs of light.
One night
you sleep
and dream of river-stones
or fish in clear water;
one night you wake
or almost
and you are standing
beneath the new-dried sheets
as the white breeze lifts and drops them
smelling of air and sunlight
as nothing else did
ever before.
Why should the cosmos, hearing
one thing
complaining against another,
take notice,
since every thing,
even death,
is a part of itself?
Isn't it the one thing
that nothing leaves?
If I cry out
just once
doesn't that cry go on forever?