Tony Beyer
from Outside of a dog
2
I often dream about
looking through books on a shelf
in a shop that no longer exists
the sort of small
private lending library
plus stationery that no longer exists
I remember
being sent to choose reading
for my parents
anything recent without 84
(our number)
pencilled in the back
some of the melodramatic
titles of that generation
and authors’ names
John Masters
Joy Packer
Hammond Innes
reappear now
on speckled paperbacks
in the Hospice Shop
witnesses to the reliability
of linear narrative
without flourish
at home
there were shelves weighted down
with memories of war
and Shakespeare and Keats
like sudden ribbons of light
flung through it all
3
sometimes books are too sad
to pass on to others to read
Uwe Timm’s beautiful memoir
of his Waffen SS brother killed in Russia
and the lifelong presence
of this absence from the family
though we can understand the father’s
guilty generation better
having known our father
who served by accident of inheritance
on the opposite side and in Africa
with similar injunctions about
honour strength unity
love of country above all else
including common humanity
and the means of fostering it
5
my library unpacked and shelved
and cartons flattened in the garage
and now the joyful perplexity
of deciding what to read next
or re-read among so many friends
that give a double density to being
the first time through the rest of Henry James
or gaps in Proust or start again
Murnane and Frame and Patrick White
for this end of the world
anything about deserts or the Arctic
or histories of Victoria’s wars
the Russians I’ve neglected but my son admires
or poems I’m on first line terms with
acerbic midnight sips of Cheever
(every time I draft this poem
my tastes have changed again)
but fiction from the Japanese
and Conan Doyle I loved when young
Lord leave me here until I’ve done with these
6
my two left-handed granddaughters
write and draw their lives
on ruled refill
at the table
the colour scheme
and complete vocabulary
of a recently encountered cockatoo
with phonetic spelling
a day at the zoo
where the most interesting exhibit
among lemurs and meerkats
was their brother
in a photograph on my desk
the girls stand together dressed as pirates
in cross-boned hats and eye patches
each with a different coloured cardboard parrot on her shoulder
when they reach from behind me
to play guess-who with their hands over my eyes
the last thing I read before darkness
is the future curved into their palms
spring sonnets
today I found
               for 50c
in the Waiwhakaiho
               hospice shop
Anna Livesey’s
               2003 collection
Good Luck
               still fresh
and accurate
               after 14 yrs
and by no
               means a small
treasure
               at 96pp
funeral
               in bleak
Bell Block
               Methodism
and a power-point
               alleviated
by the familiar
               Lord’s Prayer
the children
               saying their piece
daffodils and
               wisteria on the bier
there will be
               more of these
war clouds
               trumped up
above the
               North Pacific
with loss
               the only gain
to be had
               on either side
a lifetime’s
               achievement
bare legs
               on a plinth
overlooking
               barren sands
my wife tells
               her 100
yr old mother
               everything
as you might
               whisper into
the hollow of a
               favourite tree
or the wind
               which pays
no attention
               and spreads
all of it
               everywhere
news today
               John Ashbery’s
dead at 90
               the greatest
American poet
               of the last
50 yrs opines
               the New Yorker
but I thought
               that was supposed
to be Bob Dylan
               or that greatness
itself was in
               disrepute
forced home
               by spring rain
the dog and I
               wait to dry out
on the warm
               back porch
a rainbow
               still in attendance
then like someone
               parking a car
who revs the engine
               before switching off
the shower
               surges and stops
Tony Beyer has recent or forthcoming work in Hamilton Stone Review, Otoliths, Poetry NZ and Poetry Pacific. His new collection Anchor Stone is published this November by Cold Hub Press, Lyttelton, New Zealand. (www.coldhubpress.co.nz.)
previous page     contents     next page
from Outside of a dog
2
I often dream about
looking through books on a shelf
in a shop that no longer exists
the sort of small
private lending library
plus stationery that no longer exists
I remember
being sent to choose reading
for my parents
anything recent without 84
(our number)
pencilled in the back
some of the melodramatic
titles of that generation
and authors’ names
John Masters
Joy Packer
Hammond Innes
reappear now
on speckled paperbacks
in the Hospice Shop
witnesses to the reliability
of linear narrative
without flourish
at home
there were shelves weighted down
with memories of war
and Shakespeare and Keats
like sudden ribbons of light
flung through it all
3
sometimes books are too sad
to pass on to others to read
Uwe Timm’s beautiful memoir
of his Waffen SS brother killed in Russia
and the lifelong presence
of this absence from the family
though we can understand the father’s
guilty generation better
having known our father
who served by accident of inheritance
on the opposite side and in Africa
with similar injunctions about
honour strength unity
love of country above all else
including common humanity
and the means of fostering it
5
my library unpacked and shelved
and cartons flattened in the garage
and now the joyful perplexity
of deciding what to read next
or re-read among so many friends
that give a double density to being
the first time through the rest of Henry James
or gaps in Proust or start again
Murnane and Frame and Patrick White
for this end of the world
anything about deserts or the Arctic
or histories of Victoria’s wars
the Russians I’ve neglected but my son admires
or poems I’m on first line terms with
acerbic midnight sips of Cheever
(every time I draft this poem
my tastes have changed again)
but fiction from the Japanese
and Conan Doyle I loved when young
Lord leave me here until I’ve done with these
6
my two left-handed granddaughters
write and draw their lives
on ruled refill
at the table
the colour scheme
and complete vocabulary
of a recently encountered cockatoo
with phonetic spelling
a day at the zoo
where the most interesting exhibit
among lemurs and meerkats
was their brother
in a photograph on my desk
the girls stand together dressed as pirates
in cross-boned hats and eye patches
each with a different coloured cardboard parrot on her shoulder
when they reach from behind me
to play guess-who with their hands over my eyes
the last thing I read before darkness
is the future curved into their palms
spring sonnets
today I found
               for 50c
in the Waiwhakaiho
               hospice shop
Anna Livesey’s
               2003 collection
Good Luck
               still fresh
and accurate
               after 14 yrs
and by no
               means a small
treasure
               at 96pp
funeral
               in bleak
Bell Block
               Methodism
and a power-point
               alleviated
by the familiar
               Lord’s Prayer
the children
               saying their piece
daffodils and
               wisteria on the bier
there will be
               more of these
war clouds
               trumped up
above the
               North Pacific
with loss
               the only gain
to be had
               on either side
a lifetime’s
               achievement
bare legs
               on a plinth
overlooking
               barren sands
my wife tells
               her 100
yr old mother
               everything
as you might
               whisper into
the hollow of a
               favourite tree
or the wind
               which pays
no attention
               and spreads
all of it
               everywhere
news today
               John Ashbery’s
dead at 90
               the greatest
American poet
               of the last
50 yrs opines
               the New Yorker
but I thought
               that was supposed
to be Bob Dylan
               or that greatness
itself was in
               disrepute
forced home
               by spring rain
the dog and I
               wait to dry out
on the warm
               back porch
a rainbow
               still in attendance
then like someone
               parking a car
who revs the engine
               before switching off
the shower
               surges and stops
Tony Beyer has recent or forthcoming work in Hamilton Stone Review, Otoliths, Poetry NZ and Poetry Pacific. His new collection Anchor Stone is published this November by Cold Hub Press, Lyttelton, New Zealand. (www.coldhubpress.co.nz.)