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JAMES K. BAXTER'S OTAGO WORLDS Lawrence Jones
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Page 38
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When Fern breaks with Horse, she returns to him a stone phallus he gave to her, and as he goes from her flat to the Bowling Green he gazes 'speculatively at the water frothing over the weirs' and tosses the phallus into the Leith. But when the despairing middle-aged poet has a destructive sexual encounter in 'the garden by the river', the river has a calming effect as it seems to symbolise life moving towards death: Kisses scald. Words crush. But the river Flowed on, in a bell of calm, to whom I said, 'Pray for us, Mother. We are not yet Able to die - |
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