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.
