An Expatriate's Lament

(1)

A jewel in a cage, the bird

Swung rainbow-coloured, lighting up

The dense green foliage pressing in.

It fluttered to the floor to preen,

To strut around as king or queen,

In splendour shining all the more

As silently we looked and shared

The darkness of our separate lives.

(2)

I beat on the bars of our cage

Until you released the latch

And left the door open in case

The search for my home proved too long,

The first sudden plunge to the sea

Sufficient to cancel the flight.

Grey feathers still warm from your love,

Sweet death is the nest I will find.

(3)

Spring carnival is in the air

And masks are put up on the poles

In streets where trees begin to bud

I warm myself against a wall

And look into the strengthening sun,

Feel hopeful as I close my eyes,

Relax the tight lines on my face

And take my first deep breath in years.

(4)

I felt like driftwood, anchorless,

Without sex from behind, our way

Of coping with your bad breath's threat

To erections, with dangers from

The missionary position, when,

All crushed out, "fit" imminent,

I'd disengage in anger at

Your "I'm bronchiesctatic" joke,

Consoled if you felt that more lung

Left by the surgeon had collapsed,

Since it diminished need to risk

Pressing a pillow to your face.

(5)

My letter saying, "You're too ill

To be my muse, and thus were left

Like Ariadne, that I might,

As Theseus, black sail still up,

Add murder to desertion", drew:

"Diseased, I much prefer the sick

To live with till the day I die,

My mother's bent, arthritic bones

At home with my displaced insides

In you, my subtly evil spouse

Cheered by the sight of others' woes,

I found the deadliest of foes,

Your rude good health unbearable

And worthy of my wicked cold

To undermine and drive away".

(6)

Twelve years together and no child

To show the world that we made love,

And now I carry you within,

Give birth in lonely hotel rooms

To poems that quickly run out of

Breath after half a dozen lines.

(7)

Worst were my paranoid outbursts

Caused by your deep friendship with Madge

G. Ripper, Hobart Town's bitch-bard:

"Beware of the chameleon-

Destroyer while I'm on furlough

From lung disease in Ancient Greece.

As Sappho she'll break your resolve

To play Persephone to my

Odysseus, as fungus, worm,

Fly, moth eradicate the bay,

And even the acanthus leaf,

To make quite sure I can't be crowned".

(8)

I wished to hear dramatic news,

To have my mindscape altered by

The deaths of mother, father, you,

By editors accepting poems,

But very little will have changed,

Except the garden now it's cold,

Your illness only for the worse

Unless your silence is the grave's.

(9)

"Please write of illnesses and deaths

Involving you on my behalf

While I'm in Hellas hunting poems,

Unless I'm taken first, destroyed

Pursuing my identity

Too strenuously through the myths

As dangerously real as those

Of Oedipus, Achilles, Circe".

(10)

I rang and saw our telephone

Unlifted as you made the beast,

Pushed laughingly beyond your reach.

A black bone stiller than a stone,

Infuriatingly it shrilled

Despite your letters "I'll be there

At twelve exactly free to talk",

I hung up and it followed me,

But silently, til you, like it,

Were lying quiet as death in bed.

(11)

Crowd-watchers in the bars, I'd see

Your chairs and tables distant, not

Huge seas and continents away.

Our gestures as we nursed our drinks

Were nothing, and yet everything

We had to go on in our game.

That day they took the awning down

And you dark glasses off, your eyes

Were autumn-brown, while mine remained

The depths of winter in advance.

(12)

White roses growing at my door

I gave to Greeks whose eyes revealed

They were received less joyfully

Than yours once showed. Discomforted.

As new friends asked to place strong blooms

In their frail vase, they stammered thanks,

Relieved I'd left the red ones to

Die gracefully upon the stem.

(13)

Unable to properly breathe,

You flew to Athens to see me,

Enduring your surgically dis-

Placed heart's pain and heaviness from

Our trial separation well,

While I began a poem, which

Compared your plane stretching its wings

In the sun, with you, all in black,

Suppressing coughs and standing stooped,

Chest-deep in the shadow I cast.

(14)

"Like living with a dog inside",

I had it in me to say as,

Lung sensitive to change of air,

You barked up dark infected green

In our shared workroom where I read

Too many pages through again,

Resisting just, by clenching half-

Bared teeth, a snarl and snap as your

Sore throat was harshly cleared for such

Retaliations as: "Your poems

Are nothing more than poisoned bait",

And: "Please excuse me if I breathe".

(15)

All things are rotting as I walk,

They only grow that they might fall.

This hand that writes, this page that takes

My most enduring poem of all

Will quickly have their passing day.

As our love died because it was

Of flesh, not pitched beyond our reach

For soul to yearn intensely for,

As once it did when your eyes danced,

Enchanted by the Morning Star.

(16)

An oleander flower fell

Onto the heart-side of my shirt

Just as I wondered if you'd write.

It should have been the bitter leaf,

The curving green blade famous for

Its poison with the power to kill,

Since silence knifing rusts with age

And festers all I think and feel.

(17)

My outlook and perspectives formed

In Gilgamesh-worked clay and fired

In Sumer's desert furnaces,

By time on an Egyptian scale,

I philosophically agree

You need to break your promises

Too heartfelt to endure for long,

Dead-calm and abstract understand,

World-wearily forgive, include

A stanza as the final word:

"Your marriage, health and teaching gone,

No children to divert black moods,

Of course our joint-owned house is yours

In which to wear your sadness well",

And condescendingly sign all.