vestiunt lanae: mihi parva rura et
spiritum Graiae tenuem Carmenae
Parca non mendax dedit et malignum
spernere vulgus.
But I am rich too: Fate, an honest patron,
Has given me a small farm, an ear fine-tuned
To the Grecian Muses, and a mind from vulgar
Envy aloof.
– Horace, Odes, II.16
1
all of the trails brought me now vanish
the gate grows over
…lost to the world
then let’s make clear the play position –
I only desire to afford to be poor
I do not pretend that is not to desire
here heaven is with me
how else to imagine?
there’s still the odd delivery
the elsewhere seeping like a stain
hear the road, that it hums and grumbles
the pigment takes
if the lines can come
innocence will shape our soil
all that we need is fashioned for us
what does a magpie know about rain?
2
read in that light omens suggest
my tenure as fallible as the rest
this is the place to park
true, echoes from nowhere
come hammering home
the world is a market
no way not to play
but the world is many things besides
some of those biting are bit
3
here on my own growing gates
tending fences, commending their collapse
shrunk daily in circumference
one should acknowledge mastery
among sunfall and foliage
loathed and admired
is it not I who make
the landscape looking?
I am the field here
cattle numb in
rain is waiting
for thirst to be spoke
taps on my shoulder home
4
dawn again
this last
bright irony of the condemned
you see how the light is cast
lacks attention
the day grows over
everything done
vanity, vanities
out there the wall all window
you walk through it
were meant to
it’s in the bones
ramshackle lines
knot me
now living in the longed for time
breathing sculpture I am
the weeds pull round
5
all day today
my footsteps after
out of breath
sky is a wing
folded out over
the reckless stretch of facts wed to
sore distraction
some nights the anaesthetic wears through
you see what you’ve made
weep, laugh
6
gentle at strings and by all airs
you dizzying
the gospel of less
none left to preach
here goes though
best rule
simplest
easiest first
pick the windfall
before tugging
unless of course
limbs want a stretch
take out the errant weed alone
and leave the clump till last
arms with the barrow as low as they’ll go
7
I am more in it
by day the passages
and through dream light
myself entailed in
absence of action
the big told-you-so
voices in ether
their knowing untold
console the self with
what they cannot take
by sword, by fire
see how the storm’s hung our antenna
and deliver us from mail
as we who pen to paper impose
such willing distillations
a world
8
dive in
the screen is all deeps
spit into the vast
no disrespect
it’s all assumption I intuit
here beyond the rubbing out
what mannered vehemence
a breeze sets to paper
day fades the signs
or hollows damp
the pages where they’re hid for good
now ways of saying
edge the said
obscurity is something built
of accidents, the lucky breaks
9
I’m shaping the ruins
my own trackless waste
let me my work
the guess of chores
to comfort
to the point of fate
my own affects
to lounge about
I’ll swim the given sea
such wild iconic waves toss off
as mutual in admiration
10
let there be also
lacking effects
passing unnoticed
let lack itself
set free
not be my hairshirt
but victory
all of my kind
Saint Epicurus, here’s my candle
it gutters, there’s proof enough devotion
11
in absentia
hoarding provisions
plots and fictions
one vague sadness washes me
the all I ever wanted of childhood
crowds now
matter of fact
not remembering what’s to want
even where the ways are lost
something sweet for my retinue
the provinces are led away
they as I legion
in differences
made little as possible
made to mean
12
sooner or later
they give me a job
teaching ahead of myself a road
as if nothing were known
o that it might be
we took the slow coast
framing tar
the long and the short
of all considered
forgotten in
a flimsy persistence
that laboured failing of words
where paws
have gone before
Christopher (Kit) Kelen is an Australian poet, scholar and visual artist, and Professor of English at the University of Macau, where he has taught Creative Writing and Literature for the last fourteen years. The most recent of Kit Kelen’s dozen English language poetry books is China Years – New and Selected Poems. ‘minor manifesto’ appears in the just out Scavengers Season (Puncher and Wattman).