NZ Poetry Day: Southern Man

For Penny

The mouth of the harbour and the mountains are bleached

table linen, starched peaks – I run to keep

our meeting at Heketara Street, to go with you to the mouth

bright with fallen linen, to hold our hands out to the steep

sweep of land and the deep strait between. Your land, the South.

Walk with me, speak

of your blue house built on the hillside here, speak

of the sheets he hung out each Saturday, bleached   

and flapping, of the cabbage trees clapping in the south-

erly the day Rose was born, George who keeps

building with driftwood on the beach – teepees with steep

angles that stand the storms, Elsie with her cook’s mouth

chasing the combination of sweet and sour so the mouth

pinches and smiles all at once. Old Molly’s lagging, you speak

to her gently, tie her lead to the tree and turning, find a steeple,

George’s careful construction – the wood clean, bleached

by the sea, a place of safety, a place to keep

watch. He knows to make it strong, face it south

like the house on the hillside with the south-

facing beech trees crowding the windows, the yellow-mouthed

gorse, the two fat kereru, part tree house, part keep –

its casement windows built to speak

to the linen mountains, to the pressing sky,  to the bleached  

confounding light. And how to describe the steep

of your grief, after four years away, to find steeper

than mountains, sky-blue roofing blocking the south?

Behind the faded curtains, the bleached

window frames, all you left there safe to return to, lost. The mouth

of your grief is sour: you speak of vertigo, pale children, peaks

in sight only up at the clothesline. Back to the sheets -- we keep

coming back -- to Alan hanging them out to dry, needing to keep

a weather eye on the mountains, undeterred by the steep

climb, the clapping cabbage trees. He wouldn’t speak

of it but you knew: how the mountains coming and going to the south

moored him here at this harbour’s rim, his mouth

crammed with pegs, something eating his innards like bleach.

We’re nearly home when you tell me of the last bleached sheet, steeped

in sour and sweet – not a thing to keep – used to wrap this southern

man: his breast bone, eyes, mouth, feet, valleys, constellations, peaks.

by Mary McCallum

My first ever poem using the elaborate sestina form, and as much about the land (its north and south) as it is about the man who straddled both places - so appropriate, I think, for the NZ theme on Tuesday Poem today.

As another poet Tim Upperton said to me just the other day, the sestina is a 'weird' form and he's not sure he'll write another one in his life. Me neither. But it has been interesting seeing what it forces language to do and where it makes a poem go. More on the history and use of the sestina here , the double sestina that inspired me here, and how the form works in my poem below. 

Sestina scheme for Southern Man: a-bleached b-keep, c-mouth, d- steep, e-south, f-speak [and variations of those words, note they do not need to rhyme but mine do... ]

a b c d e f (first stanza) 
f a e b d c (second stanza)
 c f d a b e (third stanza) 
e c b f a d (fourth stanza) 
d e a c f b (fifth stanza) 
b d f e c a (sixth stanza) 
a d (1st line of the 7th stanza, "a" must be in the line, but the line must end with "d")
 b e (2nd line of the 7th stanza, "b" must be in the line, but the line must end with "e") 
c f (3rd line of the 7th stanza, "c" must be in the line, but the line must end with "f"). 


For more poems on National Poetry Day and links to poetry events all over the country, click on the quill.