The Bee Hut (4 page)

we disturbed them

with their hands ochre-red

preparing their dead

bigger and shiny-skinned

we yowled, threw smart stones

and gnawed their marrow-rich

inferior bones

we did dreadful things

we learnt nothing from them.

* * *

What was I trying to learn

whose bones was I gnawing

as I sat last week

on the bottom steps

of my old friend's

empty rotting mourning

house

crumbling down into the water

of my childhood's ancient mangroves?

I rocked on the salty tide

of the oyster-rimmed bay

alive and ageing and sad.

And I waited

for one of the Old Hairies

to brave the long hard climb

out

and teach me how

to rest my dead

and keep burning.

VAMPIRE

Each new ghost in my life

living and dead

smells of mulch

a compost growing

rich and strange

sometimes attracting

a lyrebird

that rifles through it

singing like a chainsaw

through its punctured neck

THE WATTLE BIRD

Until this morning

I've been woken up

by a red wattle bird

flinging himself

at the glass

of my half-open window

calling throatily

with raucous cheek

as he prances the wood

of my balcony rail

I'm old enough

to be flattered

and take no courting attention

for granted

this grey morning

I fumble awake

groggily trailing

cobwebs of a dream

about my long dead

still adored Siamese

clutching her to my frantic

dream self

as if she were, miracle,

still alive

this dry morning

of a slippery rainless winter

I sip my strong coffee

and listlessly watch

the window

longing for the joyous noise

of my new, if just

rattling through,

boyfriend.

EARLY MORNING BALLOONS OVER MELBOURNE

Unearthly in the chill blue

they hang silent, coldly lovely

until there's that lurching

belch of gas fire

and suddenly

they're everything I'm afraid of –

heights, ice, other people in rocking space,

my own helpless helpless

fragility.

Why, when I dream of danger,

can I never just reach out

and grab

the rising feet

of a phoenix?

THE FOREIGN FOREST

You burn your bridges

going into a foreign forest

like a gleaming cruel

new school

where you don't know

the bluffing bullies

from the silent cougars.

You learn from experience

going into a foreign forest

where cold pine needles

have a smell

like a new lover's hair

in winter –

slippery ice spiced.

You can't name the flowers

going into a foreign forest

but the leaves blaze

against the early snow

like a moment-fire

blowing into your eyes

hot. too much. cold.

J
ERUSALEM

I. MY RIGHT HAND
'
S CUNNING

Sulfurous Psalm 137

yowling to the scarred harp

of exile

pledges my right hand's

cunning

if I forget Jerusalem

if I forget if I forget

but what does my right hand

know or remember

as my left hand gnaws

its bleeding friendless useless knuckles?

II. DAVID

When I think of David

I don't think of a skinny clapped-out

senile king

growling over the juicy young bones

of his latest concubine –

nor a hot-eyed paunchy poacher

of lesser men's wives,

the remote-control murderer

if the cuckolds are a bother –

nor a father sobbing

over his beloved hair-strangled enemy

and eldest son –

nor a shining darling

pledging himself to Jonathan

with the amulet of his breath –

nor Jerusalem's poet-in-waiting

lulling black-dogged Saul

with the narcotic of song.

When I think of David

I crave to be his favourite

and swing too

that psalm lasso

that caught and held forever

a remote hard god's pleasure.

III. MY YOUNG NOSE

Jerusalem has one delicious smell –

a fried chickpea

raucous savoury

cooked in tantalising mouthful balls

it sizzles aroma from grubby stalls

suffused with donkey and camel

my first taste of street falafel.

IV. HEROD

There's a touch of the Herod

in my half-breed face.

Like him I don't belong

in this priest-ridden place.

I hang fancy palaces from the cliffs

of my fortress lair.

Our enemies are fanatics.

They breed like rats.

Chancer mongrels both

we know how to behave

we burn, we slave.

V. TOPHET

At all the gates –

countless and terrifying –

the enemy gathers.

Moloch is sulking.

Is it wrong to ask our best

to bring their first born

to the Valley of Hinnom?

Moloch's burning-bronze gorge

our only deliverance.

And if overnight the enemy

did suppurate and die

in their plague-struck tents,

were we wrong to feed our god?

Remember us fairly

for Tophet, the place of fire.

Tophet, our purifying blood price

abyss.

How can you

who follow in peace

and wallow in righteousness

name our sacrifice

an abomination?

We didn't break our hearts

for God

we incinerated them.

Know this –

We too adore

our children.

VI. CRUSADERS

They don't like us.

They won't marry us.

We bury ourselves

catacomb deep

in high sterile castles.

Splinters of the True Cross

burrow like pious worms

under our nails

and fester.

At dawn we cough up gobs

of our own blood

not the pure Blood of the Lamb.

Allah's hostile breath smells

mint-tea fresh.

Our sodden homesick faith

makes us stink.

VII. GETHSEMANE

the bloody bastards

when your friends get pissed

and fail you

the bloody bastards

even God needs

short 'n' sweet ugly speech

when His friends fail Him

is it always worse at night

the long thorn hours

the hurt, the thirst?

the flowers may open

in their fragrant night sweat

the moon may glow full

on her Pesach bright trek

but Godhead is heartless

the Cup just can't be passed

to a single mortal one

of those bloody bastards.

VIII. CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

When priests are pressed for space

when priests are greedy for grace

it's safest to stand clear.

When I was eighteen

I followed the incense

into a waxy-dark Coptic den

where a grimy cunning hand

blessed my breast

with a pinch of holy water.

Over the pernicious mourning stone

I was conned and robbed

of something precious of my own.

IX. THE STONING OF STEPHEN

One of the harshest judges unknowingly

grabbed a nob of meteorite

to hurl at Stephen.

A good shot,

it shattered the shining young man's

eye socket,

spraying through his skull

galaxies of heresies and alien bugs.

Was the new martyr's bloodied vision

impossible

or just extraterrestrial?

X. THE NIGHTINGALE IN MOLOCH

Is the secret frolic

in the heart of suffering

the nightingale in Moloch?

The bird looks like nothing.

The bird sounds like no one.

Moloch is a pine forest

on roaring resin fire.

Did some fierily distant Jewish clown

watch with a little long-view drollery

when witless Gentiles tore the Temple down?

XI. MOHAMMAD
'
S HORSE

The Anglican churches of my childhood

had an indelible smell –

varnished pew

blent with the Old Spice freshness

of my young father's half-Jewish

beautiful head

bent over a prayer book.

On its holiest of holy mountains

Jerusalem's gleaming Dome of the Rock

still holds the faintest faintest

fragrance –

amidst all the incessant sectarian human

squall –

of a horse, Mohammad's horse,

with a sweet horsey sweat on its impatient neck,

lifting off the Rock for Heaven.

One star-rushing night I leapt

from the cold silky stone floor

of the Sisters of Zion,

I left the ancient

Roman street

where the soldiers teased

mysterious Jesus,

I flew over my years to come

where I live and change

in bone and blood.

I flew in the smell

of Jerusalem,

I flew in unknowing flood.

A
FRICA

SOME BIRDS OF AFRICA

Hornbills are dinosaurs gawking from thorn trees.

Flamingos are petals flocking around a crater lake.

The eye devours a lilac-breasted roller.

The heart is wooed for life when a fish eagle whistles.

The soul needs white-backed vultures.

WAITING FOR THE CROCODILES

At last

I have the appetite

to make a meal

of this stenching carcass.

I will glut

dizzy with necessity

on its bloated guts

then pick it sweet

and clean.

But its skin

buffalo-tough

defeats me.

I need patience

the patience of a vulture

waiting in the ruffling

putrid breeze

for the kindly crocodiles

to come and rip

this dead thing

right open.

KUSINI CAMP

‘A badger on my moment of life'
—T
ED
H
UGHES

I too saw a badger

on my moment of life

but not dead on an English road

like Hughes' fly-blown beautiful animal

(why are Hughes' poem-creatures

always dead, dying or dazzling dangerous?)

My badger was African.

Nothing
Wind in the Willows

about him as he emerged

suddenly

from an inhospitable termite mound –

as small mammals do

in the late afternoon

on the parched Serengeti.

Very much alive

and on a wild animal's hungry mission

my badger lumbered

fluidly

through a shimmering dusk world

of presences I could only glimpse

and now so hungrily

remember.

THE FISH EAGLE

Even when David Livingstone

was dying

he couldn't stop loving

Africa

the Africa that made his name

but killed his wife

and broke his health

still sated him

with rapture

rapture

that had never left him

after he was shaken

like a mouse

in the lion's mouth

the blessed mouth

that mauled his arm

and killed

his fear of death

death in the heat

death in the swamp

death in his own inevitable

weakness

in death's weakness

Livingstone wrote of the nearness

of God

in the gleaming fecund world

of dangerous wonder

burning him up

in rapture

in dying rapture

without a dreg of fear

he felt nothing but

restless gratitude

gratitude in finding

exactly the god-given word

to take with him forever

the call of the fish eagle

hanging high over the

beautiful pestilent river

unearthly

WOLFGANG

In the Smithsonian

specimen brains

of inferior human species

float in tanks

like grainy fish.

The Wet Collection –

a century old

wrong turn

and fascinating

embarrassment.

All the poems I've written

after my trip to Africa

float in my own tank –

Heart of Cuteness

where I hoard and ogle

wondrous birds, magnificent

mammals, sublime empty

landscape and no

Africans.

Why am I now conjuring

Wolfgang?

The banal truth –

we were white tourists.

He was our shy driver-guide

with the charming colonial name.

But for me

Wolfgang dominates the heart

of one cold Serengeti

dusk.

Wolfgang's soft tentative English

blurs