3.2 To utopias
They always fade away, these nowheres,
There are streetlights in paradise, ‘our golden children dance
On broken glass’, dark, gothic and revived
The mitred peaks pierce the clouds and time
‘Stands still’. Hamilton’s jetboat is our brush
Now, painting its frothing wake through gorges
Bituminous, dark, and kind of Dutch. I want
To meet you for lunch and to eat rice noodles
In a broth with clams, prawns, and chopped scallions.
I want to watch you eating while I talk
And then I want to drink my soup while you
Impersonate the garrulous media types who chew
Your ear. I want to chew your ear at lunch-
Time while time stands still and broth
Froths around piquant peaks of cloud-piercing
Dreams. And then I want to walk with you
Through a golden city whose spires aspire to heaven
And beneath whose pavings rivers run down
To ripraps at the harbour’s edge and those beaches of broken
Shining glass shards where children dance.
We dream. When you dream your body bucks
Like a jetboat in the bed, your hair gets wet,
And when you wake you have that nowhere look
Of someone who doesn’t know what time it is
In this bituminous gorge of backlit peaks.
© Ian Wedde |
