Saturday, November 14, 2009

TIDES (1992) by Andrew Burke

It is possible I have written too much sadness
to leave it at that who begat what
time has swallowed women swelling through
seasons O my luck to be the broken boy
of mother’s blind womb born in open urbanity
so certified in birth my paperlife begins
I have writhen through my first cry in songs
swelling in women and swallowed in whispers
each summer beached in the white belly of years
tears and laughter torn as begat and forgotten
women in season swelling to waves of touch
the sharp skin ache in the weathers of night
chilling the transient dunes in dissolution
a moonlit dome in her shadow play. It is
possible I have not sung enough of love
to reach the swelling of ill reason
my rising tide beached between thighs
begotten in listless waves of two-lip
speakers singing the ocean to shore
between the rolling reefs gone now in
the frightened fish-dash of time shadows
swelling like flesh a woman remembers so
rolls down a dune her swollen ache

*

This poem closed the collection titled Mother Waits For Father Late, published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press (now Fremantle Press) in 1992. Jeanette and I are typing the book up again for another purpose, so I thought I'd just share this poem with you. I think it was influenced by my reading of WS Merwin at that time, although I'm not certain. It certainly is different to a lot of my writing, which is why it is interesting to me still.

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