Darkenings

Darkenings

Darkenings

born in a de-mountable, there you are now,
             fifty-something years gone by not a disaster,
        in the centre of the car-lined road,
a paper bag
             tucked in the crook of your arm
      with two paperbacks
                                    and a poetry pamphlet.
no longer having much idea
            of earlier versions of yourself
today bewildered
                    by some invented crisis
                                         apparently necessary
                        for a cowardly killjoy
(whom you wish, of course,
                                       to soon forget)
                        to end an already-fraying friendship,
but not so sentimental
            as to crank the handle
                            once the rust has dusted the debts.

*

you go on vacation
            to an unmodified landscape,
     towards a blackout,        the cause impossible to source,
                         to candle and fire,
                                      to night’s proper darkness,
you go to the bay
             where sooty grey shearwaters
    come down from Siberia
            to bob stiff on the waves,
                                 dead from exhaustion,
                        a flight from zero to infinity.


taking the news
               from a smart eco liftout —
(international features
                 delivering “all you need to know”)
of war dunes and sand dunes
                                        in deserts far away —
   camels superseded
                                    by four wheel drives,
date palms blown into blue yonder
                 and uranium-flecked scrapheaps
                                                    mapped as oases

*

there you are,             back again,
     at the printer               as covert,
         reading the back of the recycled paper,
                                cipher and sign,
vigilant under fluoro
              scrutinising discarded files of dissent -
                       a single fist raised to the world
expressionist texta
             “greetings from the resistance”
  but nobody’s watching,     just shadow,
                                                  nobody’s thinking
        that you’re here         reading reports
on indiscriminate transmissions —
             avian flu, Hendra virus, lyssa virus —
insensible species’ leaps,
                            no-bargains-pandemics,
no clues in the notes from darkening science

*

no further treatment           nothing to lose,
         man with cancer carries his son
to lay him down in the contaminated ground.
       nowhere left now,
                 moon ripple on the tailings dam
                                  where he used to skip stones.