Complex Horizons
indentAt Varuna
Dawkins would say I am deluded
in collaborating with you on a book about God
two in cahoots
indentFrench: cahute, hut, cabin
in a world unhoused, split between
those who think they know everything
those who think they know there is nothing.
How, in this combative weather, are those who stumble
willingly on to navigate between
godlessness and overgodliness, beyond
preaching, blasphemy, debate
into conversation where two so different
voices might resolve
domination into cadence?
* * *
At the same time I'm wrestling with form
how to write my father's life seven years after his death
without the pen's brutal incisions
how to shape a narrative whose submarine-combat
climax peaked too early
how to list his too-many talents without listing
steer between hagiography and warts-and-all.
Is that why, since he died, I have been inflicted with warts
every poem stuck
in the doldrums
the marriage of form and content needing counselling?
* * *
I walk in a fog at Katoomba
pleased with myself
for not being disappointed
not to see sunrise on cliffs
for being able to perceive
shifts of water and light
how various and clear
sounds drip and splash
how rich the green-bice
and vermillion when
vision is quietened
by absence of sunlight
noticing how observant I am
of black-chinned
honeyeaters and limandra
I slip on the wet-metal steps
to the Three Sisters
wrench my shoulders
and the experience
into regular stanzas.
* * *
I'm looking over the rails at an idiot
on a ledge half-way down Katoomba Falls
looking over the drop
decide to rewrite a bad poem backwards
open a box you sent me
words clipped from newspapers
juxtapose at random
surprise yourself.
When I lose weigh
in my backwards journey
to convey how it feels
to exchange postcards
with a vision
four dark hands
saying what mattered
while Helmut and I
translated only the words
that were unnecessary
from the moment when
I and the Walpeyankere woman
stood in a breezeway in Alice Springs
and saw the tall German husband
with his cloud of angel hair
overshadowed by the six-foot-two
African dancer descending the stairs
with him to hook us with her smile
I sift words from the box
complex horizons
but still beat
the lines into regularity.
Yet I tell you I got
nothing from juxtaposing
Buenos Aires and bread
You snort and suggest that if my sentences
all start the same, I should steal openings.
Should I pirate the Thieving Magpie
onto a disc for your birthday?
* * *
Next morning, I take a young journalist walking
she's been to a barbecue
in Libya, but never walked in the bush
she's intrepid in Baghdad
and Beirut, but her shoes
are white and soft
she says, Someone is lost
in the mountains
I say, This is a fire-trail
if you want to step