Hilltop: A Literary Paper. Volume 1 Number 1
Wellington
Wellington
Time is a frown on the stone brow
Of a monument, a gale shaking the quay.
There is never time to let the whole day sink
Into the heart, and hold it sheltered there.
Power breeds on power in labyrinthine hives
Nested under the daylong driving cloud;
Stale breath of suburb dawn hazing the harbour,
Tiring the eye, stripping the nerve to fever.
City of flower-plots, canyon streets and trams,
O sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats!
There is a chasm of sadness behind
Your formal giggle, when the moon opens
Cold doors in space. Here on the dark hill
Above your broken lights—no crucifix
Entreats, but the gun emplacements over-grown
And the radio masts' huge harp of the wind's grief.