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Journal » Trout 13 » | ||||||||||||||
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Ode to drainageGregory O'BrienComo canta una ciudad Federico Garcia Lorca
As a pipe sings, a city
in eight hours' darkness, each working day
working parts. So much history
to fall over or fumble
the whir of dying batteries and
half a mile down this, the city's
All these items preserved in
while everything above rusts, rots
occasionally a voice approaches
a phase of sport, a scene from Shakespeare.
miles of arteries, you are also
of the inner ear
A car driving over a man-hole cover
now that is a symphony if ever there
endless passages, entire systems
by tree roots or simply, inexplicably
like a novel has clandestine passages
includes, in this case, the Wahine Storm
stormwater drains that lesser versions
in pipes and S-bends and even low-lying
Venturing down your dark voice-pipe I wonder
giant wetas, penguins, generations
with its vertical arrangements, a soaring
of a coarser nature, grumbling oceanwards, bespeaking
But it is the plumbing of brass instruments you most often
the man-hole cover from my eyes. The music
whole. The sky a state of mind
to these depths. The city seen in its best light
what the ancient world was most respected for:
of Nero, but the Cloaca Maxima—the Great
indifferent, do your citizens realise, as they sleep
the deeper night beneath them
in their living rooms, there may be a game of cards
until such a time as the players are summoned by
afield. Remember the huge wooden ball that rolled
of Europe, to clear them, and went on
(or so the classicists would have us
to the necessary equipment, the parked van
soap, these boots the full height
under ground, black air twitching through these
water, the universe and its root systems
is cleared, a river flowing from
tended by a pipe man. For that is how
cleaner, here in my element, amidst the shimmering
underworld, where the bell-towers and turrets
upwards to touch
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© Copyright 2006 Gregory O'Brien & Trout. | ||
This issue of Trout is sponsored in part by UNESCO. |