I took this job down at the Corinth Mint
after my marriage went on the skids,
I was bored at home on the DPB*
and I was sick of those two **** kids.

Jace shot through with this ***** called Glauce,
her name brings to mind an eye disease,
and her old man wants us out of Corinth
even though I got down on my knees.

I feel like the serpent who was Golden Fleeced
when Jason slipped the snake oil past it,
but, since I've been working at the Mint,
I can spot a twenty-four carat *******.

Mading relieves Manute from guard duty.
They share a meagre meal of millet porridge before
Manute returns to the refugee nation of southern Sudan.
The noon sun is a harsh sentence for a parched tongue but
they talk not of coffee or juice-laden fruit and
rice and lentils are mountain memories their stomachs can ill afford.
Instead they curse the clear skies that rain only strafing jets and
pray for their dry-breasted wives on pilgrimage to the aid station
carrying children swollen with the promise of death.
They snarl rumours about al-Bashir’s lapdogs
in Khartoum growing fat on food intended for them.

Jason waits, informed by cell phone of Laurie's imminent arrival.
He orders a wheat beer, its earth tone inviting on a silver tray and
its musky sweetness washing away a morning of phone business.
The noon sun is a warm blessing through the picture window but
they talk not of haloed hills or the light-laden river and
recession and retrenchment are market memories their ulcers can ill afford.
Instead they debate '63 cabernet versus '74 chablis and
moan about their reconstructed wives driving halfway across town
carrying children swollen with the promise of private schooling.
They snarl rumours about Key's cabinet
in Wellington while wolfing crayfish and Steak Diane.

You should practise joy more often,
it becomes you
and the radiance in your eyes
when you receive what others take for granted
is, for me, the greatest gift
and the deepest sorrow.
For you should not have to live on the crumbs
and these small kindnesses are your due,
what you deserve
not what you should have to crave.
I cannot understand how one so giving of her love
has received so little in return.
So, like a beautiful antique bureau that has been moved
too many times by careless owners,
your burnished mahogany heart
has been chipped and scarred and
my cargoes of love often find anchor in
a harbour of doubt.
My words may fall short of your hesitant ear but
perhaps your mouth believes my kisses,
your body believes my arms
and in my eyes can you see how your joy
begets my joy?

On the train to Haifa
I think about my father
in wartime Palestine,
a different time, a different name
but the same place.

His memories of oranges and beaches
and warm, Mediterranean swimming
are the times he chose to rescue
from the six years when the world
was drowning in its own blood.

The weather is blue and grey
but the sun shines
like my father’s medals
on his blue-grey air force uniform
that entranced me as a child.

As the helicopter gunships prowl over Mount Carmel,
speeding north to Lebanon,
I wonder what times I will choose to rescue
from a land built out of longing,
but paid for in blood.

I wake to sirens in the night
the voice of flight
black on white
a symphony of despair
rising and falling in the still night air
crossing the light
black on white
we stole their children
bred them bled them white
now we have bedlam in the night
read them their right
black on white
school work jail
set up to fail
feeling most alive when the sirens wail in the night
black on white
parents clan tribe totem language all recede
speed fills a need
hotwire ramraid let's give these Wetjalas a fright
wake them screaming from their dreaming
fair exchange              too right
I wake to sirens in the night
black on white

O grandmother,
though we are Pakeha you had great mana.
You lived close to that taciturn volcano, One Tree Hill,
and its scoria scars were like the lines on your face,
etched out by the evolution of that city.
And, grandmother, you remembered the beginning of the cycle
with the lucid vision you could not afford on the recent past.
I always wanted to tell you that I loved you, grandmother,
with a sincerity you would feel long after you passed
through the gates of heaven.
To tell you that when I was a child,
I believed you would be here always,
but then I listened closely to the silence between your words
and I knew you were weary of this world.
You were the last bridge
connecting us with a pioneer century
and I feared we would lose ourselves if ever we lost you,
but we never did
for in our children and in our children’s children
we will see the face of Ruby, the dark-haired girl.

Like a sailor returning from a long sea voyage
to find his village wiped out,
like a soldier returning from an unpopular war
to find the gates barred,
his eyes traversed the terrain of his longing,
but the landscape offered him no point of entry.

She no longer keeps the home-fires burning,
she stamps them out
lest they betray the flicker of her ardour.
Across a vast plain of darkness
he sees her there, working in silhouette,
methodically cooling, dousing down their history
from the bottomless bucket of her frozen tears.
Here a memory, there a moment of affection
and over here
every moment she ever arched in ecstasy
or ached with longing at his touch.
“No more, no more,” she whispers, her head bowed
over her *******, “all fire is consumed by ice.”

His ***** and heart debate constantly,
but they are separate animals now and he rises
above them with the lightness of suffering.
Up here, he captures the clarity he was always denied
and he sees her like Venus in a half-shell
attempting vainly to cover her nakedness.
As she recedes from view, she lifts one arm to wave
and her flimsy cloak falls down.