Tony Beyer


Belle époque


not everyone’s in Paris
just for a good time

the clochards whose clothes
are the same colour as their dogs

the woman who has no European language
but mimes putting food in her mouth

and when it rains it soaks
the small change of bitterness

down into the catacombs where the dead
have tasted this before and know



After the bath (Degas)


seated naked on a towel-
covered chair
she folds upon herself like a loose fist

(one elbow tucked in
where the forefinger would be
her knee the knuckle of the thumb)

then reaches down 
to dry between her toes
ignoring for now her damp hair

and where above the florid sofa arm
a chemise hangs
ready to be shrugged into afterwards



Edo jidai


in her delightful poem
‘Beauty and Sadness’

about Kitagawa Utamaro
Cathy Song notices

the artist’s inconsolable eye
towards which the hundreds 

of women he drew 
were indifferent

because they knew 
not one of them posing

in silk-filtered light
could answer his hunger

not for themselves
but for the finite depiction

each brush mark or colour stroke
on paper as fragile as human 

existence though longer lasting
rendered more elusive
 


Passions and ancient days


I knew he must have died
when I found his copy of Cavafy’s poems
in a charity shop

and bought it anyway
to place on the shelf beside my own
and remember him

the last time we talked
he was two years into a six-month prognosis
astonished to be still around

his reading tastes showed there was
more to him than the resignation
with which he contemplated the end

those squalid youths
who ennobled one another
by their discreet performances of love

those fractious voices
trapped in antiquity
often so uncomfortably like ourselves

Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. His print titles include Dream Boat: selected poems (HeadworX) and Anchor Stone (Cold Hub Press).

 
 

previous page     contents     next page