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The voices that get up
1
in summer this tree
rustles like lover’s lace
against a man’s chest
and the lover’s lace
rustles like a star
in grass skirting
the tree that leaves
the wind breathless
as an explorer
entering the only clearing
where he can measure
his shadow against
the length of the word ‘nobody’
2
Sometimes a flower becomes
a lover’s arm but a tree
doesn’t need to be anything
else. A tree never cries
for the child it overshadows,
for the mother who must die.
3
Only this sea has the bed
where a girl can stretch
into her death, closing
those ultramarine eyes
as breakers shake out
clouds. You swirl around
my ankles; you spit
light and leave
the spineless flesh
for terns to overlook. Te Kakapi,
I feel for your
brilliance but it
wavers, the pulse of
a swollen heart
under rough water.
4
Don’t say your name; don’t
let those
syllables
follow the
winter moon
as it sows
dust
over the bone. Let the night
press your
flesh
(you know
I’ll beg)
as the moon
rolls over
the horizon’s stones—
they are
harder than our mattress,
they have
the scent of shadows.
Te Kakapi,
the moon isn’t a cry
it’s a cavity worn by kisses
which echo
in your breast,
in the
clearing
where I
whisper your name.
5
You lure flowers
out with a mouth that swells
men, leaving them
wretched in the light
they dreamt of. Dying—
it’s not a name you forgot
from childhood: it isn’t
your pitch hair flaring
as the moon collides
with our campfire,
as korimako fly
through your pupils
to pick at my words.
Dying is the silence after
the silence after
I hold you.
6
We die with the wind
on a careless shoulder,
on this distant earth
footprints cannot stir.
Worms are rooted
in our hearts; they
wait on the light –
it will shrivel them.
Grass grows through us.
The stones have no eyes.
7
you are the ghost I
won’t approach
I am the phantom you
don’t notice
in the
corner of this gilt mirror
as you brush hair the
sun never caressed
hair which splits inside
the head
which is
splitting with your lips
which split the
voices that get up
to the ends to
no good
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