Pax

love at first sight

I do not believe in love at first sight
Pure hope alone can sustain that belief.
Such notions gather credit at midnight
But by morning we return to unbelief.
The face is such poor evidence;
Beauty does not live in faces, and yet
So strongly we wish for coincidence
That we burden ourselves with heavy regret.
Why should the universe grant us warning
In a single glace, a shadow’s motion,
An entirely stranger kind of seeing.
An entirely singular emotion.
I do not believe in love at first sight
But if I believed in love I would love you.

almost a proper sonnet. Alternative final line:
'But if I beleived then I would love you.'

my mother and the universe

this photo was taken in full colour. It just turned out this way

Refuses to be hidden

Nikko, Japan 2003

Holy Thursday Sunset

Holy Thursday, two thousand and six
Was the greatest sunset of my life.
Returning from swimming rain warmed waters,
Looked up at the convent, alone on the hill
I saw it was drenched from tower to steeple
In glorious light, more golden than eagle
It beckoned from its perch over Sydney.
Skies crowned above with imperial colour:
Clouds came alive with unforeseen splendour.
Suddenly out of those blankets of purple
There sprang forth an arch, brighter by second
I cannot recall rainbows more vivid,
For parallel soon a second arc crept
Together they stood in the darkening dusk.
The waves before me shimmered in colours
Half that of furnace, half that of sapphire
The light sank deeper in its orange bed
And the first clear sky of the day revealed
In a halo of Lapis for the hills.
Though rainbows must die, clouds soon turn to black
As darkness steals in, I would cry to miss
A greater beautiful sunset than this.

not the best, but i was proud i managed to fit it all into a ten-sylable meter

Darling Harbour, Sydney, 2003

i now have a camera again, thanks to the great generosity of Tebbs, whom the world does not appreciate as much as it should

Asakusa, Tokyo, 2004

True Story

In the gathering dusk I beached my canoe
The beach was shallow and muddy, with a tiny stream running through
From the waterfall that rattled softly in the distance.
Only the birds declared their existence.

Houses ringed the bay and boats sat inside it
But no human soul moved.

Slowly I was aware of music.
Softly a piano crept from a house perched on the cliff.
Slow chords trickled out;
Exquisitely sad, longing and lonely
But never hopeless, and somehow mystical.
I planted my paddle in the sand and stood enchanted.
And I wondered that I would never know the player who gave me such intimacy:
A song I had never heard before,
Nor will again, I feel.
Suddenly it stopped, and I was cold, and wet, and alone.

'A poem is never finished, only abandoned' - Paul Valery

other people's poems

i still havnt polished those australian poems, so here's a few of my favourite poems that anyone with an interest in poetry should read.

of primary importance:

TS Elliot - The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
Dylan Thomas - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Thomas Hardy - Afterwards
WB Yeats - He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
Phillip Larkin - This Be The Verse

and because i cant confine myself to five choices:

Robert Frost - Aquainted With The Night
Ted Hughes - The Thought Fox
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Ozymandius Of Egypt
Louis Macneice - Prayer Before Birth
George Gordon, Lord Byron - We'll No More Go A Roving

news

That last picture was taken two years ago. Three days ago i returned to exactly the same spot. Loads of my best pictures are from that trip to Austalia/Japan two years ago. Unfortunatly my trip this time was not nearly so fruitful, as i managed to lose my camera. So no new pictures for a long time, methinks. I did manage to write about six poems, all of which will hopefully appear once i've polished them. Anyway, here's one of my very first poems:

A Magical Time

I watch the earth, and sea, and sky,
The tranquil sky, blue as the sea beneath
A lone bird wheels among snowy clouds
Waves lapping softly on golden sands.
Grey stone, as if sculpted by angelic hands
Stacked in towers like monuments to an ancient god.
Forests as silent as birdsong at dawn
Far off mountains, blue with mists of the unknown
That roll into the far side of infinity.
Softly blazing sun, burning a trail of healing radiance
Baking the rocks, red as the heat of a thousand years.
My feet make tracks in the sand
I feel like an alien here.
But if I was not here, it would not even exist
For what is beauty, when none can see it?
This scene of more worth than any prince’s hoard.

this was also inspired by Aus, three years ago this one. My old english teacher made us enter poems for some kind of Hillindgon competition. This one came second, and it kinda sparked my whole interest in writing poetry. The title was fixed by the competition (because it is a terrible title)

Mortality

as viewed from Manly headland, Sydney

Favourite Verse

I have read every poem in this book.
I would open the book at any page
And read whichever poem was shorter
Or appeared easier to comprehend

The book was organised by theme, not author.
So I soon learned which sections I liked best;
At the beginning was Love, then Nature.
But I would always turn towards the end.

For there lived Contemplation, Time and Death.
Somehow I gravitated to the best,
Judging by the titles, the dates and topics,
Structure and Form, in time by the author

Eventually I decided to read
Every last poem, cover to cover
And I discovered that I like Keats less
But Yeats more, having seen them better.

A little old-fashioned, too many sonnets.
But many creases tell my affection.
And if it had never been given me
Then I would never be writing these lines.

Inhale

i think its innes, but i can actuallly remember who this is...

i was gratified (3)

i was gratified
to hear you talk to me
today though i still find it hard to imagine why
you spend time on me you are one of those
people who seem too nice and more kind to me than I would
expect even predict or understand
not that i complain of course i simply tell you because it puzzles me
i was gratified to hear
you talk to me because
this signified i was not to you totally
insignificant and still worthy of some comment you may even have walked
all the way over for the prime purpose of saying a few
words to me both times the conversation was initiated by you
and yet
i do not feel altogether
happy with this turn of events not from any fault of your
own but merely from my own incompetence and inability to deal with the
actuality of talking to you and
more than that you talking to me so i did not reply
adequately though i may have replied
politely and sensibly the point is that i did not reply in a way that would lead
the conversation on and in anyway disclose
my thoughts and feelings toward you so that i might have appeared
positively hesitant which is certainly
not the case so i was displeased to find that as i thought
i am inadequate to you and generally i
fail as per usual nevertheless
i still came out of that encounter with a newfound
respect and energy for the day so
i cannot help but feel the encounter was positive

fun with stream-of-consciousness. stupid blogger has the margins too thin.

Untitled

or, Cologne Station Ceiling

after sun, after rain

In winter,
i wished for spring.
now it is spring,
what will I wish for in summer?

Daffodils
newly come
but trees still bare;
yellow seems incongruous.

Early spring
was always thus?
seems strange time
when birdsong brighter than sky.

Grass already green,
winds still blow,
daffodils bend
but yellow for me is not yet hope.

Under cloud,
i do not believe.
under sun; summer will come:
trees green and no leaves underfoot.

Ribs for the sky

Progress

tokyo

What choice do i have

What choice do I have but to look at you
Every chance that I get. Do you think I planned
To stare until your radiant cheeks grew red?
I wish now I had never caught your eye

But who can blame me, when it is obvious
You cannot be ignored. Or so I believe
Though other men’s tastes be different, there is
Something about beauty which resonates

Do not feel the need to smile at me, it is all
Quite hopeless. Leave me to my folly,
We only embarrass one another.
But if you would truly show me some kindness,

Turn your face to profile. I have seen more
Sculptured features in statue and film,
But I would never give the name beauty
To one I had not seen in the flesh

As I give it to you. God preserve me
From such foolishness, and remind me of
Shakespeare, who believed Virtues flew t’ward beauty
Like moths to flame. Juliet could have been a

Witch, for all Romeo knew. Therefore I ask:
What right do you have, to make credible
Such preposterous notions of beauty
Which are dangerous to entertain.

i thought this was soppy crap, but my advisor disagreed, so here it is