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

Merwinesque (November)

It’s what we know on the off-chance between appointments and theatre meeting-up at the top-end these forty years or so clunk of saucer on counter without a word caffe latte to follow or winter coming in from the cold to lasagna in the back room pentola of mince sauce on low flame two or three bubbles popping at the surface all day breakfast talk supper talk or November as usual tourists and habitués all the talk to be had if we knew our neighbours if the world was different to how it is Pellegrini’s plane trees greening same old address

 

Merwinesque (November)

 

It’s what we know

on the off-chance

between appointments and theatre

meeting-up at the top-end

these forty years or so

clunk of saucer on counter

without a word

caffe latte to follow

or winter coming in from the cold

to lasagna in the back room

pentola of mince sauce

on low flame

two or three bubbles popping

at the surface all day

breakfast talk

supper talk

or November as usual

tourists and habitués

all the talk to be had

if we knew our neighbours

if the world was different

to how it is

Pellegrini’s

plane trees greening

same old address