Michele Leggott
some day
earthwalker
I set out again in the morning of the world
moving south the mountain behind but never
out of sight aroha-pai I said to my mother
and sister don't cry this is something
I want to do catch the skein of stars behind
the mountain pull its snow blanket close
in the snapping blue air black maire
under my fingers and the blade looking for
roads that will shape what I cannot say
now or perhaps ever the mountain hooks
my heart the wood my dreams at Ngaere
the lake and its trees flick past and are gone
here the mountain paused to weep I move south
putting summer and her face behind me
aroha-pai I have forgotten the tiny figures
we made in the snow cup of the crater
the day of the open climb but I have not
forgotten the curve of the maire I have not forgotten
the stars setting over the mountain and the cold
leave-taking as our train pulled into the station
awapuni
when the horses were drawn up
we became a host silks across the moon
were not more beautiful than our eyes
straining to make out a winner a loser
at the edge of the track a path to undying
on the boisterous roar of the crowd
arrower
we stand in the stream a second time
Psyche and Philomel with us but now also
Minotaur and Ibuki Maunganui Hawkes Bay
Star of India Limerick Tahiti Arawa Athenic
Orari Ruapehu Waimana we clear the straits
and Minotaur takes the lead Ibuki
the right flank Psyche the rear Philomel
the left flank between them the transports
form two lines Arawa leading to port Maunganui
to starboard eight cable lengths apart
in perfect weather we turn west I am part
of an intention an arrow laid on the sea
face to the sky and wrapped in a blanket
I stay on deck when the boat begins to roll
sick like everyone else the first two days
I keep one eye on the horizon marking
troughs and crests in the grain we greet
whales and porpoises we march around
Hobart apples and flowers from the crowd
pick up Pyramus and the Australians
at Albany and turn north floating palaces
of light on dark water before the blackout
before Cocos and Colombo before Aden
and Suez in single file we pass through
the canal guns and searchlights ready
to take on the Arabian moonlight
zeitoun
the mirror image the second self the place
of olives remembered in a famous seaport
called also Peace by Farsi speakers in Fujian
where the silk road begins the guidebook
is unequivocal each sits in the shade
of the other offering a long view almost
I make out the dense pattern of sails
almost the exchange of hostilities and trade
in the souk then as now bolts of satin
flying fish shimmering in the morning sun
horseman
we always had ponies mostly fat
and happy to have four at a time kicking
along to the river pool later on there were
picnics hay rides and family excursions
to Dawson Falls Mangamahoe or once
the Meeting of the Waters we swim the horses
in the Nile below the Delta barrage trek sometimes
between date palms and lush berseem but desert
sweat coated with grey dust is our signature here
the khamsin blows a cloud of black locusts
strips the small farms bare we fight our way
back to camp through dummy lines
buy oranges in the desert and talk of France
ismaelia square
I went back again and again
great banks of purple bougainvillea
but I couldn't find that room I saw
arching over the road the doorway
sandals of gold toe-caps of gold
I passed through into a workroom
beaten gold inlaid with lapis
and there she was not very tall
a walking figure with the head
of a dog straight shoulders
and blue eyes fixed on the void
foot soldier
a jam tin bomb I give to you
wrapped in a Turkish sock dead boots
sticking out of the fresh sap wall
bits of shattered mirror for periscopes
heat and flies and putrefaction words cover
wounds and decomposing flesh two pints
of water is better than no water at all night bathing
with bullets mule carcases and ship's fuel
beats washing in a tin cup up on the ridge Imbros
and Samothrace float on the cloudless blue
beyond the blockade and the white hospital ships
another world when they call an armistice
we form up in burial parties and spend the day
digging stacking collecting our dead and theirs
piles of bodies and weapons at the centre line
drawn between us then back to the trenches
at 5 pm and there we were in hell again digging
and fighting digging and dragging and fighting
the wounded haunt my waking the dead
my sleep a terroir of exorbitance and depletion
in Shrapnel Gully sitting in an armchair
washed ashore with other wreckage I fish out
a postcard of Heliopolis and write heartily delighted
with your Trinity College results we are enjoying
splendid weather & having a swell time
this ought to make a splendid tourist resort
later on but if you come right away bring a gun
ari burnu
from the arm of the chair I remove
a single lathe split by sun and rain
but serviceable the tree fern I carve
bends over notched hills and a bird
underneath I scratch AKE AKE KIA KAHA
and take it up the beach to put on the grave
of Manny Marfell who knew the back country
better than any of us and won't be
going home to his rough and tumble life
night fighter
eight inches square the white patches we sew
on the backs of our shirts no coats no blankets
no lights no cartridges just bombs and bayonets
up the side of the Dere in the dark the destroyer
turns off her searchlight at 10 pm and stops pounding
the position on that crazy overhang we pitch on up
into their lines take the top and hold on
a day and another night to be sent forward
into the trap that waits below the crest
of Chunuk Bair as the sky lightens they come
for us again ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH
faster than a galloper louder than death our white
patches fall off and we are finished with the place
I remember stretchering all day to the beach
one hand tied up in a dirty bandage the steady beat
of engines taking us off under cover of darkness
reigate
after the hospital English trees and furlough
among strangers who never left home but look
like all of us they are kind and take photographs
on the lawn at tea and on the terrace they want
to make up for the bad blood the melancholia
hanging around uncertain smiles the snap
we take on the balcony outside his room in autumn
sunlight one in uniform and still banged up
the other about to sit finals and become
a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons
I know you will be delighted with this he writes
for never have we been taken together before
bombardier
the doglegs that took us from Sling
to Alexandria Mosca to Marseilles
slow entrainment through spring and all
its blossoming orchards orderly vineyards
clustering villages busy towns to Le Havre
where we taught ourselves gunnery and supply
to Armentières which taught us nothing
we didn't already know three blasts
on the whistle send us diving for cover
little sister as the plane pokes around
taking photographs that could give away
the guns behind a factory door or a wall
in someone's back garden inky pinky
parlez vous the estaminets are full
little sister old men and boys dot the fields
bringing in a harvest where there is one
we go south in easy stages St Omer to Langpré
les Corps Saints Amiens to Bonnay and Corbie
summer is gone and we have come to the valley
of the Somme our gun carriages
founder the horses starve we pack gas shells
to forward pits and watch the first line of tanks
lumber off behind curtains of accurate fire little sister
there is language for this and for everything else
we fall into knock down break up dig out push away
there is language for everything but the cost is
unspeakable I was there I did these things
for fifty two days then we were taken out
and sent to Fleurbaix with what was left
little sister inky pinky parlez vous en
caterpillar valley
in the dead hour he comes
from the Casualty Clearing Station
at Gezaincourt such a pretty name
if we had ears to hear it we talk
such a long time we talk he is
a tourniquet a suture a hollow needle
I am trebuchet bombarde heavy mortar
between us file columns of men poisoned
by gas bandaged eyes one hand
on the shoulder of the man in front
they shuffle past the little cemetery
quartermaster
each footprint draws the eye of a searching gun
knee-deep in snow we walk backwards
with feather dusters covering our tracks
more or less spreading big white sheets
in front of our own guns after firing
to conceal the fan-shaped marks in the snow
leather and sheepskin waistcoats whale oil
for sick feet new diagnoses for sick souls
the hard frost the hard frost
our mother in stocking feet outside the window
listening for the baby's cry in the dark trying
to remember how many cartridges have been fired
from the gun in the dead drunk grasp of him
who torments her our father who shot
at the six-year old then at her and now lies
dead to the world in bed with the four children
she walks to the next farm and raises the alarm
she will press charges she will not take him back
kicked in the head by a horse when young or not
cut feet and terrified heart the mountain
standing silver ghost to her trail of tears
our mother before we were born of whom
he could say when they came to wake him
she might have kept it quiet the guns put down
successive lifts wheel to wheel
in the only available cover
te henui
she takes a spade and digs
them in side by side black earth
to the chin then under they go
looking sideways at each other
the one they lost to the river
the other to unspecified illness
two small boys our brothers
whose names she repeated
in our names calling you
by the drowned one's name
calling me always by the other
undertaker
it was too much for you when we were
mining at Messines you were neurasthenic
in Brockenhurst then in charge of invalids
on Ionic returning home as we drove deeper
into the Ypres salient coming to the place
called Passchendaele I called out your name
but you did not hear and so we went on
weary and heartsick we crossed
somewhere in the Indian Ocean two
dazzle-painted ships with their cargos
of hope and despair you were gone
in and out of the hospitals trying to work
with torn wings and the shame unable
to explain why you couldn't come back
I set up the business again breathed
hot wood and the sweet scents of
the machine shop trying to forget
your shaking hands trying to imagine
a pathway that might bring you home
it was no good when you lay down
in the leaves of the forest with morphia
running softly along such ragged
highways as were left to you that night
I was dreaming of the cone rising
out of the bight blue with distance
my brother of whom we will not speak
your children will grow up with excised
details your sweet Madeline will struggle
to understand why you ran away
my brother face to the stars and voyaging
over the endless shoulder of the mountain
how is a bird where is spring ake ake ake
kopuatama
where else would I lie having brought
so many others to the place stood by
the open grave listened to the riro thread
its song with the grief of snuffling relatives
then driven the back roads foot to the floor
thrashing the big car and singing at the tops
of our voices Some Day When I'm Awfully Low
the way we might have done on a different
road in the springtime just around the corner
