There You Go

1
Seven days
to straighten
out. Away

you go, no
divine smile
inviting
bird beast flower

along, not
a glimmer
or birth-star

just ashes
and that speech
‘dust to dust’
dumbing down

the hour. Now
you look, look
how ‘it’ falls

through & through-
out the house;
peel apples,
boil your meat –

mist over
those eyelids
long before

Kaikoura,
the haunting
also-ran
afternoon.

2
Once uttered
the sentence
makes ‘it’ so

and water
turns to wine,
vinegar
to balsam.

The sentence
remembers
family

dead. You hang
photographs
on serif
hooks: you

decorate
space, sizing
the paper

tiger here
there and then.
Crimson
silk sunset,

cathedral
arch: neither
takes you in;

you cross this
vanishing
line – it’s you
to a T