Inventory of Air
It’s snowing pollen now and shining like manna
on mountains of flaming ocher, it’s snowing
backlit woolen albumens like taciturn
cotton fields, the down, the tufts,
it’s snowing in cyclone swirls, in whirlwind of light
it’s snowing dandelion flames, flakes, bunches of
air
and people swim, they don’t go
they row, urban fish in trousers and fins,
they float on pollen froth, gowns
like umbrellas shed cotton wool atoms, rapidly
a powder of dust burrows itself away in laces that wrap
the groin, and the sparser spores in the pubis
skim, where I follow them, smelling
the incense of hot simmering flesh:
halos of sea salt between the breasts,
wakes of herbaceous locks, clouds of breath
spiced by smoldering loins,
and gather
with silken rakes droplets
of pollen from eyelashes, and hear the echo
of bulbs of cotton wool that alight
on puddles of pitch, in asphalt gravel, and follow, eye wounded,
the trout blond with shiny boobs
and tight scales, and cut the air
with the oar veering round the streetlight buoy
and busy tritons slip into grots
of subways with shells at their ears
where rumbles the mad sea
of business deals, and on it all
the cotton wool Nile flows, the fury
of pollen on outlines of bodies
on the three-sided San Sepolcro square
on the plane-tree dome with its muffled
rattle, on benches of bipeds all battered
with bafflement, splattered with spunk and pee
in fine rags of linen and velvet
because they are rich with laughs, incontinent
like old men dazed by the blaze
of pollen, oblivious to arthrosis, heel
and toe, sideways, they stroll
a lively tip-tap, and aslant slashes the gold
of the sunset spread out on sedimentary crests,
on the tridents and poles
of the houses, camped out on the balconies
and rivers of air that fondle each other
while the keel of the chest cuts through
the concentric waves of pollen
and the child absorbed in the gulf
of its mother’s arm is choking
on wool and oxygen: a happy
cyclist, holding his breath in the pollen,
twists like a screw, and pike diving
rigidly bounces off windshield
of volvo, and his bianchi perches onto
alien convoys, man at the wheel
belches up on the spot minced pasta and egg, already
a shadow of living, crowning the dashboard
and unto pollen thou shalt return, handfuls
are cast by passersby, so fleshly
is the light that one dies well
in the airy foliage, the rhythm
I too of Eliot feel, it beats
low, in the biological sack, underneath,
while discharges of pollen
torture swimmers and cab drivers,
in the coral cave of the arches
I get drunk on all this manna, I yield
every pore, nerve, vein
to this pollen that dresses the air
to this air that chews on galleries
of light, to this opaque light
through which schools of passersby pass
in flames, unclosing vermillion
gills, in which the cast iron trunks
of the street signs crumble
and the fifteen-floor whales
gulp up exhausted castaways
and for this mutation, miracle,
cataclysm, surreal weapon, for this
excess, access of pollen, meal
that no one has paid for and verified
or battered nails or planed
or typed or pushed drills
or driven tractors, no one
has signed contracts, passed
laws, injected comas, elaborated
selling strategies, yet
it’s coming, sweet apocalypse of pollen
without burying women in mud
or attacking cells or devastating
cerebral nodes, it comes unarmed
without lines of tanks
without deterrent and guerrilla warfare
without an iron hand, it comes
without profit, at a net
loss, it comes, collapses, is gone
I don’t know if its caress can heal
if it breaks the collar, don’t know
if it saves, absolves, if it’s a happy
coin for all cravings, if it’s bread
and wine of infinite hunger and thirst
it is a sheer folly of the air,
a pregnancy of the air, fertile
burial of seed: it doesn’t heal
it certainly drives you mad.
Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008)
Hotere
When you offer only three
vertical lines precisely drawn
and set into a dark pool of lacquer
it is a visual kind of starvation:
and even though my eyeballs
roll up and over to peer inside
myself, when I reach the beginning
of your eternity I say instead: hell
let’s have another feed of mussels
Like, I have to think about it, man.
When you stack horizontal lines
into vertical columns which appear
to advance, recede, shimmer and wave
like exploding packs of cards
I merely grunt and say: well, if it
is not a famine, it’s a feast
I have to roll another smoke, man
But when you score a superb orange
circle on a purple thought-base
I shake my head and say: hell, what
is this thing called aroha
Like, I’m euchred, man. I’m eclipsed?
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