Merwinesque

Attended a well-attended poetry workshop conducted by Judith Bishop at Watsonia Library. The exercise was to write a poem that conveys a mood or experience you have never communicated to anyone, or to rewrite a poem using a different voice. I had taken along my November poem 'Merwinesque', composed around feelings at the time of the death of Sisto Malaspina. The exercise inspired me to write a riposte, in the same Merwin style, from one of the friends who would breakfast at Pellegrini's years ago.  

 

Yes but Philip we will need

to finish our coffees

and go out into heatwave

or Melbourne deluge

to sell books

or mount legal cases

or design what we design

apartments or race courses

not looking back

as family its riddles

and money its insistence

and ourselves that is

ourselves as we are

continue unabated

as we

get past November fair weather

fairly certain but

only fairly certain

that trams will take us there

neighbours won’t act up

accidents won’t intervene

our words meaningful

our address safe

for another day

and us

charged up with caffeine

not in the newspapers