Читать книгу RENDANG - Will Harris - Страница 11

Lines of Flight

Mariinsky Canal

A girl twists a stalk of rye

around her wrist like

a bracelet. She sees her father

at the plough and wants

to pick a cornflower, its dark

blue almost purple

colour threaded through

with grief, among the weeds.

She wants to go and pin

one to his chest. And all this

is implied, though

the photograph itself

shows just a field of rye

with cornflowers.

Diyarbakır

One day, a white rabbit read

my fortune, twitching as it chose

from several slips of paper, soft head

straining at its harness, nose

scabbed, peeled back like bark.

Here, amid the desert, stark

as day, they tortured dissidents;

now paper slips blow between

the points of a barbed wire fence.

A life should not just be, but mean.

Illinois

The familiar, unearthly

scent of Bayside Breeze.

On the freeway, bent

along its axis, I do

as ghosts do: wait.

Acres of still corn.

Slow-smelling night.

Across the ocean

he lies in hospital.

He might as well be

dead. This far from

the side of any bay,

I measure sweetness

by its incongruity.

London

A shuttle flies between

the seasons, smoothest

from spring to summer

when I think of my Chinese

forebears forced to work

a loom. Who’d be alone

today? Migratory birds are

weaving new patterns

in the air, shuttles flying

back and forth. Here. No,

there. I’ve been missing you.