An Introduction to John Tranter (Part 2) [by Thomas Moody]

This week I'd like to share three shorter poems by John Tranter. "The Moment of Waking" and "The Plane" are both from Tranter's 1970 debut collection Parallax, while "Balance" is from his sophomore outing Red Movie and Other Poems (1972).

 

I like the idea of the pilot who is daydreaming in "The Plane", as a plane flying overhead is so often a trigger for our own daydreams down here on the ground, and a kind of Russian Doll of daydreams is established. "Balance" manages to create the uncanny, intriguing and overall unsettling mood that one often finds in Ashbery's shorter poems, such as "Anticipated Stranger".

 

The Moment of Waking

She remarks how the style of a whole age
disappears into your gaze, at the moment
of waking. How sad you are
with your red shirt, your features
reminiscent of marble, your fabulous
boy girl face like a sheet of mist
floating above a lake.

Someone hands me a ticket,
in Berlin a hunchback
is printing something hideous;
my passport is bruised with dark blue
and lilac inks. Morning again,
another room batters me awake—
you will be haunting the mirror like silver—

now the nights punish me with dreams
of a harbour in Italy — you are there
hung in the sky on broken wings
as you always have been, dancing
preparing to wound me with your
distant and terrible eyes.

The Plane

The plane drones low over Idaho,
a thundering shadow on the wheat.
The captain is thinking of a dust-cloud
disappearing out to sea.

The heavy wings tilt, a silo
looms abruptly. The cloud
falters on the horizon of his mind.
Taped to the cockpit wall is a photograph,
a piece of Sunday afternoon, 
a lawn, a bright dress, flowers.
Soon they will be flying over the mountains
in a halo of ice. The cloud
hangs about, behind the imaginary trees.

Balance

The traveller slouches at the table
handling the glass of pale sour liquid.
In the dim corner someone plays a mandolin
and the heat wavers at the door.

He can see the bus crawling away
into the desert. Having arrived nowhere, he finds 
a portion of despair like a gun
settling into a comfortable balance in the hand.

Comments

[Ralph Nightingale]

This is terrific! More, please.