Sport 39: 2011
Brent Kininmont
Brent Kininmont
The God Question
Where do the hands go when
they keep to themselves?
Here, it turns out—
the woods behind the grounds
of the temple.
A spot where one imagines
both would come to rest.
Palms receiving
needles from the cedars,
my body large as
each thumb—not quite
touching the fingers.
No sign of the Giant
severed. Nothing
but the hands open
to suggestion.
Seto Ohashi Bridge
for Sanae
We walked until
late afternoon,
looking for leaps
in imagination,
legs straining against
the trail of hills,
the notebook folded
into my pocket.
Then, out of the air
in this train
coming back,
a line writes itself
between islands,
one thought leading
to another,
about the audacity
of steel, say,
how it carries on
over tankers, trawlers,
that ferry down there—
the one, perhaps,
we had rushed
to catch, but missed
the connection.
Degree of Empathy Required
The Department of Italian now seeks a lecturer or senior lecturer
(depending on qualifications and experience)
—Auckland University
From Tiber’s bank
I spurred on the trio,
ignoring notes her piano
dropped in the water.
She was losing her footing,
slipping into marsh
where the two boys tried to
play woodwind
by blowing into reeds.
*
If not for the break
I found in the fence about
the Roman theatre,
where Greeks had staged
The Wasps (and Sting
played one summer),
that child peddling ‘ancient’ coins
might have followed us
all over Ephesus.
*
page 131
Full of the red wine of me,
a mosquito in Verona
paused in the space
between acts. I didn’t
snap shut the programme,
bearing in mind
whose blood would be spilled.
The blot in an otherwise
worthy opera.
*
From one coast to
another, a brick for every
body under Hadrian.
The only other walker,
far as my zoom could see
through drizzle,
wondered would I let him
capture the wall
with nobody on it.