Title: Ars Poetica

Author: C.K. Stead

In: Sport 20: Autumn 1998

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, March 1998, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

Conditions of use

Share:

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 20: Autumn 1998

Ars Poetica

page 134

Ars Poetica

i
Barefoot in shallows
his sleeves
trousers
sodden
the small boy
talks to the tide
to the water-birds
to the tall sky
and the Bay's
furthest reaches
If your words
could speak
his world…

ii
would it be enough?
It was Yeats who said
poems must be packed in salt

iii
The birds are
migrating somewhere
They pause here
to feed and to quarrel
and the nights
are full of their noise

page 135

iv
Recipe for poetry
(or Spanish omelette)—
potatoes
green peppers
deep oil
in a heavy pan
eggs beaten lightly
cooked slowly
eaten cold
with white wine

v
Centre-table
the potted cyclamen
responds to
‘Reach for the skies…’
or
‘All in favour please raise…’
Its five eager hands
in white gloves
on thin stems
catch light from the window

vi
The birds stand
each on one leg
in a wind
that ruffles and nudges
page 136 They don't topple
but hop—
the favoured leg
asleep in its feathers

vii
Vice-verse
arse-verse
the poem as
scatological
or obscene
artefact
is more than
cocks and cunts
twats and dicks
or the rhyming of bum with come
It is Martial
Catullus
the Roman realists
testing
testing

viii
The four-year-old
lost in a crowd
fists in eyes
and wracked
with sobs—
page 137 this is apocalypse
the poem at the end of the world

ix
The wind has died
and the moon
will not settle the question
It lies on the water
mimicking itself
in a French accent
‘Alfred de Musset’
it reminds me
‘died young’
and
‘Where is your blue guitar?’

x
Persistence
of the child's
rainbow and rose
but a glory
(Wordsworth)
gone from the earth