Tuesday Poem: About

About four in the afternoon they said,

which could be wrong, but my boys,

both men, were in the kitchen then,

helping themselves to slabs of bread

and ham, laughing at something they’d

seen on Family Guy, their bodies filling

the whole of the space between bench

and stove, fridge and dishwasher. And I

was complaining from the family room

(it was nearly time for a glass of wine)

about how I’d worked all day to fill

their well-fed stomachs, and they, well,

what had they done? How they’d laughed

at that, laughed and eaten of the bread

and the ham, and drunk of the milk

(straight from the bottle), and talked

about the episode of Family Guy with

Jesus dancing – funny, this Jesus, not

miraculous – talked in the cartoon voices

of Pete, Stewie, Brian the dog. Outside

in the thickening day in the thickening
water, the young man, really a boy, had
probably already fallen from the kayak, 
and was struggling to keep his head up,

the salt water thicker with each pull of his 
arms, the ragged bulk of the island dragging

him down, and back at the beach he’d left 
behind – houses with windows flaring,   

kitchens with people eating bread

and cake and pouring wine and frying

onions and thinking dully about taking

in the last of the light walking the dog. 

What did they do, my breathing boys,

my chewing men? They couldn’t have

heard the splash or cry, but saw perhaps

through the open window the failing

sun shining, as it had to, on white legs

in green water. Thought it a boy falling

out of the sky.  Something amazing. But

the sun shining on water can be anything

when you’re tipped back swallowing milk

in an untidy corner  with stacked  dishes

and an empty cornflake packet, waiting for

your brother to recall the irreverent dance

moves of a cartoon Jesus.   They’ve  sailed

now, the young masters, vessels navigating

choppy waters with a calm that belies their

private concerns about disaster. When I ask,

they don’t recall the sunlight catching on

anything that day or if the exact time they

inhabited the holy space  between  bench

and dishwasher was the same as the time

of the drowning, or even why they hung

around longer than usual when they

nearly always had somewhere to get to.

                                                             Mary McCallum

This poem. It's finished at last. It began with the death of a young man by drowning - in the part of the harbour we look out onto from our house. That day, my sons were in the kitchen. I was there, too. We weren't aware what was happening until later in the week, but that evening, we remember the helicopters and wondered if someone was stuck in the bush up behind us. They were looking for him. We didn't know. 

The poem is closely tied to Auden's Poem Musee des Beaux Arts - one of those poems that is never far from the place in my head where I start to write. It begins:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

The rest of it here with the Brueghel painting that inspired the poem. Worth checking out. 

Do go to the Tuesday Poem hub this week for a deliciously playful poem by Joan Fleming posted by Helen Heath. 

'After Reading Auden' out in the world

My poem has stepped out into the world with nary a backward glance. 'After Reading Auden' has made itself comfortable on the Caselberg Trust website with news of the Poetry Prize that embraced it, and is jostling for space in the shiny new issue of Landfall (221) which is packed with such pleasures as a Vincent O'Sullivan review of the novel 'Gifted', a Stephanie de Montalk essay on nursing and poems by Alice Miller. There it is between judge Bernadette Hall's report on the Caselberg prizewinners, and Michele Amas' delicious 'home to you'. And now the Dominion Post is interested in hosting 'After Reading Auden' too.


I am thrilled by the poem's chutzpah, delighted it is still a little shy of all the exposure, and more than a little amazed that it is somehow connected to me. This is how it should be for a poem. Too much time inside a computer hard drive can make it a pale and meagre thing, drained of the confidence it needs to step out into the world. 


It made its first steps here, but now it's out there, the poem seems pinker and plumper and its shoulders are set a whole new way - and listen, it's singing our song.

Tuesday Poem: After Reading Auden

The river we swim

fresh from the horses, under

the sun he calls ‘incurious’,

becomes a man’s body reclining –

its current, muscular,

its translucent depths, flesh.

And we are in deep, held tight
at the shoulders, hips, wrists,
wrapped by arms yielding and

not yielding.

From the very first coming down

into the new valley, we felt the force

of the river’s intimacy, its deep

soundless need – not sour,

not shiftless, but lucid, expressive,

sweet. The leaping light from the cliffs,

the unexpected greenness of trees,

the harrier on thermal air, broom pods

popping in the heat, and we, the girls and I,

dissolving.

At last, we pull away, God knows how,

and climb up through the truffle-dark

horses and yellow broom to the hill-top,
and we pause there and look

back at the river stretching its limbs,

arching its back, its mouth

a soundless ‘o’ of green ecstasy.

And slowly,

             so slowly, limb by limb,

we dry the water from our faithless skin.

                                        
                                                     Mary McCallum

All of the above is true. It happened in our summer break over the hill in a place of exceptional rivers. The Penguin Poets' volume of Auden's selected poetry I bought for a couple of dollars from a book fair. Rediscovering him in this worn and slender book that can fit in a pocket or a palm has been a delight; discovering this particular river valley, a thrill. 

Do click on the Tuesday Poem quill in my sidebar to find this week's hub poem by Seattle poet T. Clear. It is my selection as editor this week, and should not be missed. After that check out my fellow Tuesday Poets in the live blog roll. Wonderful stuff there always.

POSTSCRIPT- In April, this poem won the inaugural International Caselberg Poetry Prize 2011, and as part of that was published in the May edition of Landfall 2011.