for seamus heaney

contents white canoe (version 23) stones flawed biogeography in quatrains: emotionscape #1 confessions of the winds of spring frontier hypothesis seed cathedral napoleon on the wall just one point to make 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 10

white canoe (version 23) (after peter doig)

there is a light you can still make out rolling light when fences come down deeply where locally quarried stone bleeds through the undergrowth that offers life like a flash of robin similar to the yellow robin on a rainforest fringe something that we know - an impossible centre in a motionless morning yet homage and consent to the algorithmic rhythmical afternoon cross-hatched so ripe with promise under widening continuous rain inhabited skies. a stilled train on an empty track total or incomplete the clouds flock over humbled weatherboards notice the green within the tired pastoral and the huge bright sword of rainbow mirrored on a process to somewhere else by opencast mines facing north and ploughed field bends of crystalline fearless skies there is a light rock historical and whipped in the thickened grass of mid-september evenings in a roughly stockinged snow gum trunk - lyrical manual and illogic from a distance the red of the signal stop the approximate soulscape - unambiguous circumambient anchor definitive, irreversible as the invasive pines under cirrostratus and starlings at dusk (the itch of hay) or the edge of hayfields under blue and partings in hair

take to the wing uncomplicated oceanic dazzle riverine commonwealth come rushing in the loss of folk on a process to somewhere else in cows black against green and the solitude of earthrise.

stones go to the beach and find me some stones run to the bike and hitch yourself to the stones arch the last line of the sunset sky curve it towards you and end-stretch the dripping light of sky swung through jumping roos - and grate past dark gums washed into the roo frontier adrift on the muddy avenue embassy neighbouring cache of late winter wave breaks endlessly pulsating white - then grab a sea vowel rake the meadow of a million moon locked tons absolute tidal sounds deep in the mist of first stars communion of bats prismatic data ending under night elsewhere

flawed biogeography in quatrains: emotionscape #1 myth is speech stolen and restored (roland barthes) and now the wavelength of roos the emerald green bush canopy lightclipped to sage during the course of an hour to part echo the hay-yellow grass clumps at times and lukewarm washed-out open sky silvered twisted ceresin barks: a kioloa ceilidh, like kerala cuisine and time is (just) hanging on the x-axis which brings me to nutmeg and that i love pine nuts and cumin yknow, for their wintry atmosphere the burden of history and the northern hemisphere notice the roar of sea columns of sound sailing away from their moorings a lesson for us if we knew it repeat this phrase as the idea is sensitive to feeling not insight repeat this phrase: an afternoon not unlike this with time hanging on the x-axis the boarding pass of the breath of wind, simple shadows in a parenthesis of every dawn not trains propelled toward dusk from big event cities nor cigars nor synthesizers, nor tinned food, why ruin it like that? just hold the moment of the folds of an afternoons afterthought the crease of a promise and the promise of a crease an interior analogue to the exterior edge of future happenings and well, flaws in kinship that like the invisible covert pall of clouds and fading cloud shadow enveloping the situation in falling light and encumbering the leftovers of sky diminishing into the contradiction of cruel stars and the herb moon diminish into the immutable grace of uninvented silence.

confessions of the winds of spring i hear you gazing at the astral sky i see your heart mocking the darkness and i know that you are years away from home i come to you in your puzzling outpost i move through your sector of this galaxy and i know that you are provisional and alone and i am sequencing direct interference which you cannot fathom and i am moved perpetually by you and the others i come and see and hear them i am of the routines of nature, remember and i carry seeds in the air i think of these as wild memory i know of these as childlike poems i am sequencing direct interference which you think of as building blocks i have travelled great distances i come with no intention of resting and i am a weapon of mass destruction i herald climate change to you, biped i am the thorn of all your desires and i am the knot that will not untie and i offer grace to the precipitation of the skyway and i see you sleeping and sleep-thinking i punch through you and tickle your vision i come song-like like humus comes animating out of the earth and i know no mercy and i fear no evil, ha! i merely am i merely am merely moving through the mere world

frontier hypothesis, (gendered beachcomber perspective) there are computers in silicon valley, she said, that are made of DNA and then she got up and went to the beach the door left open as she thought of poems with a narrative and threw a stone at the sea but it was the tasman sea and the stone was a particular non-metallic mineral matter and the stone was not shaped for a purpose it was lying on the edge of a line of the outstretched waveprints at 2:30pm of the shifting tide it was merely, the stone was there no evidence to be subjugated to ideology so what matters, she thought, about this matter doesnt matter and she moved her mind into the comparative mode compared the waves pull and push to that of the railway the shifting of cargo and human traffic back and forth, pulled by kinship and pushed by distrust the lack of an anchor is not a concern she thought of the waves and their gravity sensitivity and thought of this unstillness as the ultimate frontier well, one that needs no flag no flag to orient itself no chrysalis in which to transform the frontier of the transference of energy, she said to herself no: an irreverent pulse of cosmic relations mass, momentum moving through space the wind wave that is governed by physics the shoaling and refraction, and perhaps the breaking is unlike me, she thought, and like me, she thought, the wave is generated and grown propagates and decays like cities, she thought, like nations, disciplines in universities, like railway networks like movements in art

seed cathedral (an ongoing poem that will unfold into 12 versions) dear seeds, you have been moved around now for some time dont you weary of this? and what do you think about these banks for you? for you, for others its not governing the wild, is it? is it? and what of the politics of museums, seeds? the power to shape things like social understanding do you know what that is, seeds?; or collective values, even? does the curation of you indicate how we construct knowledge er, by that i mean how we think of the world, define and regulate it? what about how we experience and treat that thing once called nature, seeds? do you care, dear seeds? seeds, wake up! you are being exploited and transformed into IP and other such stuff your life is being rendered into memory how can i put it? you sit in a cathedral that sits in an exposition park in china that looks like a memory chip on a motherboard like a library in a city are we saving you seeds, seeds?! one of you, come on, a dialogue please, seeds seeds seeds!! your own cultural reality is what were interested in, seeds i promise you, seeds, i promise

napoleon on the wall

(after suzanne vega) The nineteenth century, so shifting and varied in its character, was visible beneath the apparent uniformity which Napoleons genius tried to impose. Henri Lefebvre In Paris, he cleared the streets with a whiff of grapeshot Thomas Carlyle

even if he wasnt in love with you all this to say reflects back on you observe the blood no military tattoo and the code of law from him to you other evidence has show that he developed iron mines alone he refined agricultural zones while placed in exile on elba napoleon watches from the wall his mocking smile says it all as he records the rise and fall of 70m subjects better to eat than to be eaten he says even while dead beaten he thinks its his destiny to write his own history napoleon on the wall the final fall of the first consul to island inhabitant with a library full observe the man the asylum political and the mode of awe inspired in all other evidence has shown that he recalled planting mulberries at his ajaccio home while gardening at longwood, st helena napoleon watches from the wall his mocking smile says it all as he records the rise and fall of 70m subjects better to eat than to be eaten he nods to those who are beaten he thinks its sovereign destiny to write his own history napoleon on the wall freedom of faith, no privilege from birth: the first pan-european code on earth observe the government no military tattoo the democracy from him to you other evidence to delve shows while wordsworths and coleridges lyrical ballads first hit the shelves he was directing (167) scientists through egypt napoleon watches from the wall his mocking smile says it all as he records the rise and fall of 70m subjects better to eat than to be eaten he screams aloud while dead beaten he thinks its his destiny to write our history napoleon on the wall during a campaign in italy, he founded two newspapers while drinking tea one for his troops, one for france, one for war and one for liberty other evidence persists that

the history of aristocracy he couldnt resist thought homer was an encyclopedist observe his quest for epic prototypes when looking for a self in racine and corneille he picks up moliere then looks for a suicide pill but locates ossian its myths and its plots then comes to the tales of mary queen of scots, but why didnt he stop at manchester free trade hall? why his thoughts went so far north at all is a puzzle to the people who spoke in the hall dickens, churchill, and dylan, too who thought that hed read of peterloo other evidence comes through than his interest in the massacre of me and you twas his care for plants that wooed the british public napoleon watches from the wall his mocking smile says it all as he records the rise and fall of 70m subjects better to eat than to be eaten he says even while dead beaten we read his destiny while writing european history while facing our napoleon on the wall napoleon on the wall

just one point to make: this is not a poem, ok? (i am not a poet) attitudes, beliefs, emotions they have their own distinctive meanings and modes of support im told too simple to say that they mark out a territory alien to the terrain of rationalization or too true? and then (note the way it kinda unfolds) a clich to say that they, emotions mostly (perhaps), are forms of communication commitment and cooperation and the curry sizzles in the gaslit corner indifferent to me the ale is called chancer

and tom waits speaks of an old yellow moon and the downtown trains, full of girls trying to break out of their little worlds and im measuring ways to break down the gap between now and the next time i cross the equator between the little world of here and the northern hemisphere your eyes and mine the nuances in our separate senses of commitment a silence emerges and - lets keep it there the jangling guitar bleeds into the night into our past? that isnt very well put.

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and our lives feel mapped out on the goddam x-axis and we think of futures, or we imagine scenarios unlike the bee who just works fail our intuitions while the earth spins and moves in circles to its final destiny and all our life programmed by its gravity and light its plummeting into the centre of the sun its movement - map that to be moved is to recognise a distinct meaning, therefore, is it? thank god for logic one more platitude is it, again, to note that hearts are polluted by questions of property and our time well spent between now and when exactly? i guess we rehearse securities yes, theyre worth rehearsing (weve been educated) securing although weve heard the twentieth centurys lies about risk and security the nightmares we dont need and yet we breed and we cling to this space even though we distrust it with distaste we distrust it a postcard from the smithsonian printed in korea is of an angel, a painting of an angel (1887) - its a girl with wings arms not outstretched, say 30 degrees but out

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offering balance and eyes, big, pointing to/ anchored by(?) a future l leap little girl i am so sorry that ive paid you so little attention but i have carried you to australia your wings will carry you the winds will incoming attacks, you can parry i will i do i will e ap

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