Chris Holdaway



Poëme

L.P.F.

              In a foreign way I love to go down to the town square on days when something like the artificial ice-rink creaks temperately in small scale. Wide town steps arise with a roar and silences. She pursues the light in her hands, will never look back on the suddenness of her daughter’s first date, and a fledgling juggler increases his repertoire—at first to four then five batons, in front of moths.
               I am at home long after the door has closed . . . flags line our late enlightenment town hall in a long sentence, that could be anyone’s. Dew pools as if conscious of the measures taken to drain the grass, delimited like rugs – the cold moving like smoke – and this is the way in which I know that I see things.

Saintmarie

L.S.

The plates not individually wrapped have broken, meaning most
of the small saucers, sunken blue rings;—I live
     on a hill now, lucky me.

It falls over.     Your eyes climb the opposite embankment
     of apartments; losing something by getting this close.

Snake along the trough, highway flags pass under captive shoulders
—Montparnasse, on the left bank of the river,—
the same broadside in
     hurricane wire to batten down the hedge

in some places
through the hollow kites.     Sheep with all but large clumps of wool
removed—kept from the road, river and rail.

The overbridge at another time in a straight line to acute light.
     Small truck, passed when its shadow fallen behind
rolls over and I duck as though a bird swept by..

White heat sharing the end or beginning of one year,
     curves together.

Chris Holdaway is a poet and linguist based in Auckland — http://chrisholdaway.com.
 
 
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