The Constant Measure
The oven’s tipped open as a bar heater
its red art deco zags another age’s
faith in a designed century
as a Chevrolet unscrolls up the hill
and the painted-from-life steeple’s
pleated shadows carve out long wedges
specifying a theorem you once knew, like your life,
sparkling over the top of a drink “Spirit of the Plains”, etc,
while every unwinding gesture
salutes some mirage or schtick tilting on its axis.
The landscape doesn’t change. The tree collects its rings
Hope’s waterlilies bubble on the pond’s face
accompanying imagination that conjures his blank escarpment
but softness fields, by leaf and fork,
its pained accoutrements offer a silenced fee,
betrayed either way.
It’s full-time being pluralist
Days tolerably mashed at each step in glorious streets
At home wind foots the skating glass, crooked lintel,
soundless pages. Water botched upon the fern.
Anyone can paint it.
Gig Ryan
The ‘right’ word is surely not the word you were expecting in a Gig Ryan (1956-) poem.Infuriating? For the unimaginative maybe, but isn’t that one of the great plusses that marks off poetry from prose? Besides she, Australia’s most singular poet, is a great craftsperson and never some kind of verbal control freak. Her seventh book, New and Selected Poems (Giramondo, 2011) was published as Selected Poems in Britain (Bloodaxe Books, 2012).
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