Author/Uploaded by C. K. Stead
By the same author Poetry Whether the Will is Free Crossing the Bar Quesada Walking Westward Geographies Poems of a Decade Paris Between Voices Straw into Gold The Right Thing Dog The Red Tram The Black River Collected Poems, 1951–2006 The Yellow Buoy: Poems 2007–2012 In the Mirror, and Dancing...
By the same author Poetry Whether the Will is Free Crossing the Bar Quesada Walking Westward Geographies Poems of a Decade Paris Between Voices Straw into Gold The Right Thing Dog The Red Tram The Black River Collected Poems, 1951–2006 The Yellow Buoy: Poems 2007–2012 In the Mirror, and Dancing That Derrida Whom I Derided Died: Poems 2013–2017 Fiction Smith’s Dream Five for the Symbol (stories) All Visitors Ashore The Death of the Body Sister Hollywood The End of the Century at the End of the World The Singing Whakapapa Villa Vittoria The Blind Blonde with Candles in her Hair (stories) Talking about O’Dwyer The Secret History of Modernism Mansfield My Name Was Judas Risk The Name on the Door is Not Mine (stories) The Necessary Angel Memoir South-West of Eden: A Memoir 1932–1956 You Have a Lot to Lose: A Memoir 1956–1986 What You Made of It: A Memoir 1987–2020 Criticism The New Poetic In the Glass Case Pound, Yeats, Eliot and the Modernist Movement Answering to the Language The Writer at Work Kin of Place: Essays on 20 New Zealand Writers Book Self: The Reader as Writer and the Writer as Critic Shelf Life: Reviews, Replies and Reminiscences Edited Oxford New Zealand Short Stories (second series) Measure for Measure, a Casebook Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield Collected Stories of Maurice Duggan Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories Werner Forman’s New Zealand First published 2023 Auckland University Press University of Auckland Private Bag 92019 Auckland 1142 New Zealand www.aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz © C. K. Stead, 2023 ebook ISBN 978 1 77671 104 8 A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher. The moral rights of the author have been asserted. Design by Greg Simpson For Kay ‘Just when the gods had ceased to be and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do we find that grandeur.’ – Gustave Flaubert ‘I know that half the audience might not understand this but I’m writing for the other half.’ – Tom Stoppard ‘so long / as there’s a next, there’s no last.’ – Allen Curnow ‘It is hard to renounce life once one is fond of it.’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein Contents 1. Home To be continued, perhaps Tohunga Crescent Ode to Autumn On a day late summer in a poem like wine Pastoral: Kaiwaka, 1941 Say I do this Dombey & Son To ‘Amnesia, Muse of Deletions’ Mary The corner Hobson Bay Waking in a Time of Trouble Haiku: Audiology Haiku Just Checking This side of silence Birthday Tercets for Kay Anonymity and Silence Something to tell After surgery To any gardener with a terminal prognosis Poem in October 2. Away What Next? The Death of Orpheus Proses Movie review: The Misfits ‘At the Bay’ David Mitchell in Menton Côte d’Azur Sonnet in a time of Lockdown October 16, 1817, Angostura, 5 p.m. The Dream of Carlos Amigo Sonnet: Paula Rego and an inn The thousand peaceful towns Fin Impromptu: Afghanistan Psalms of Judas, 1 Psalms of Judas, 2 Psalms of Judas, 3 Psalms of Judas, 4 The challenge National Anthems 3. … and Friends Poem for Kevin Thelma For Jane Massey For Fleur Adcock MacSpaunday To John Berryman 13-syllable tercets on behalf of Goats Murnane Country A Sonnet ending on a note of uncertainty Keri Hulme – The Bone People Smalls Crossing the Bar A sonnet for Peter Wells Iris Creative Writing Class: Syllabics An encounter in Belsize Park Gardens Just like that Sam Lines for a Granddaughter Solidarity Games at 14 Esmond Road, 1955 Thirteen Ways of Looking at Tony Rudolf E = mc2 The Money Ian And last Notes 1. Home To be continued, perhaps Horace, Odes I, 11 It’s said that to know too much displeases the gods, so for their sake, my love stop asking for the end of our story: no horoscopes, no animal entrails, forget weather gurus in this time of storms and climate disasters; don’t think of the waves at their worst smashing on the rocks at Karekare but share with me a bottle of Te Mata red. We’ll leave our grapevine and plum tree to blackbird and thrush and other untidy feeders, and to the wasps. Let’s talk together not about flashy Love but the brilliant books and poems it has inspired and the ones who wrote them – brainy gossip, and jokes about the times when there were still flowers to be picked. Forget tomorrow my love. Just live with me today. Tohunga Crescent Across the street the Allen Curnow house sold and garden-tidied and refurbished, respectably letting as Airbnb is home to wild parties, and just once a riot bringing cop cars, a paddy wagon, pepper spray and more than one arrest. Always there’s rubbish at the roadside when the random tenants leave. Tonight by morepork and moonlight while the neighbour cats patrol I’m watching Jeny walk in her ghostly gown smiling and weeping, and here comes Allen alert with a new poem needing to know at once what I will make of it – but as I read he seems to slide away among the trees all darkness and displeasure. There’s a light down at the Bay – that’s Graham with his spear, full tide at midnight, and the water still holding itself for something new to reflect. Morning will disclose the pōhutukawa know it’s December, time for spectacular blossom – but Jeny’s ambiguous tears have left me anxious about those flashing lines of Allen light seen and forgotten like the spell of weather just gone you hadn’t known might be a blessing. Ode to Autumn This day’s officially the first of autumn but