Cilla McQueen

Cilla McQueen lives in Bluff, at the southern tip of New Zealand's South Island. A poet and artist, she has published eleven collections; those currently in print are Markings, Axis, Soundings, Fire-penny, and The Radio Room, as well as A Wind Harp (CD).  They are all available from Otago University Press. Cilla was New Zealand Poet Laureate 2009-11.

Bump And Grind

Light rain. I lie underneath the tree’s soft umbrella. the birds sing counterpoint, four dimensions couched in the blipping flight of sparrows. the world and its immediate reflection, a self-excited circuit, a snake with its tail in its mouth. eyes in reflected eyes, layers of glass, a maze of strange and simple couplings. the world dreaming, a bubbleskin away from my fingertips.

*

in the silence, song buds. imagination flowers in bareness.

*

one day when I was sitting calmly in the garden, I suddenly slid into oblivion, then out the other side backwards. shaken, I looked around. my heart was pounding. everything seemed just the same as before.

surface tension holds yes apart from no, zero from one, the line between. when one becomes the other.

miles from where we started

speed of light, speed of sound, truth in fickleness, trees in the wind. slip out, dip out, slide sideways through the very surface of the mirror. Life’s tiny bright sliver, moment of balance when the forces are exactly equivalent. the kissing of the pair. voices twinning in a travelling cocoon. fusion, the bright bleeding crack

cliff-walking, trust of the rope. a good path shakes you along like a blanket. Balance  flickers about an axis. o today the harbour is milky jade and the clouds are pearl grey, overlaid.

cicada saws and files away its filigree. events  fabricate form. the world, dreaming itself.

what meniscus holds us apart? tangible reality, nimble time, elastic constants.

down to the listening dunes, the tiny pallisades of hearing.

seismographs register the jizz.

*

heavy and hot after rain. the crossing bells ring,

tangtangtangtangtangtangtangtang (bird whistle) and here

comes the train, a big one, grinding along all on one note,

tooooooooot

the train is present (a close bird sings) and past, a light red

shift, clung clung, clung clung, over the

sleepers (a close bird sings) and brakes, wheeeeee wheeeeee,

till the bells stop, the bird continues, low rumble, fade out,

fade out.

train faraway, slowly up the hill

and around the headland to Purakanui.

*

universal information, beamed right back. passage, molecule switches, flow both ways. melt the mirror. where did the absolute go? out with the bathwater? change is the only constant.

simple and strange, seeing it from both sides, dissolving in layers. inside the bubble.  a serpent with its tail in its mouth, a chain reaction. light looping, endlessly.

in the daytime,

moths dream

in the japanese maple

form growing in patterns out of the higgledy piggledy, the higgledy piggledy continuously changing form. and what is this fundamental particle? each more tiny than the last, a jot, a tittle, an iota, a smithereen, a scintilla.

I water the avocado. water fills the saucer its pot is standing in, slowly rising above the rim, held in by the curving meniscus. then the surface tension breaks in one place and it overflows. each rivulet has its own skin that contains its flow. In the house above the railway line, somebody is playing a jazz saxophone.

dimples in time’s swirling, black hole, white space, change

at that moment a heavy truck rumbles along the street,

two sparrows tussle over a crust

the man next door’s feet crunch on the gravel

a door slams, a voice calls “Goodbye Wendy”

Eileen’s washing machine spins to a climax

a thistledown lands on the kowhai tree

and the two sparrows are now

very close to me

on the bricks

now they forget me

and hop

and go up to sing in the leaves

sunlight feeds the garden

everything shines and grows

miraculous

through the vortex and

out the other side:

now

From Benzina (1988). I wrote my way through a major spinal operation in 1985-6, finding, as many poets have, that the act of writing - by whatever possible means - is a good way to cope with pain. It frees up the poetry, too, being intimately connected to survival.

Lola

memory bubbles

pop without trace

if you touch the walls

shoot

through the waterskin

like a gannet

trampoline kiss and flip

hot,

melt bone.

a hand

palm up

asleep.

how birds fly up

Lola died on Wednesday.

From Wild Sweets (1987). A simple poem about the simple fact of a death.

Wacky Language

he said, naughty girl, you must not

just do wacky language for the hell of it!

must not be flouted. respect our trivial concerns.

man’s work, how else will the structures survive?

thus spake he, how else will we conduct

sensitive and crucial negotiations?

weight! let us be noble!

wordfabric the tennis elbow and spreads out

whistlybliss! Hell! then a big

awful face says BITE THE ICECREAM

all the legs collapse

From 'Crikey' (1993) written in annoyance.

Joanna

i

I visit my friend’s kitchen.

There are roses on the floor

and a table with pears.

Her face is bare in the light.

She smiles. She has hung

a curtain. I like the darkness

inside our Dunedin houses

even in summer, the doors

that open into the hall, the

front door that opens into the sun.

ii

Her hands lay colour light

as lips on paper

with the utmost care,

in faith the soul may leave us

as the sun the hills,

effacing shadows with all shadow,

or the moon the sea, reflection

rippling into time between,

the space in the world that held her

invisibly healing.

From Homing In (1982) and Fire-penny (2005), these two pieces arose from a long friendship with the poet and artist Joanna Paul (1945-2003)

Kitchen Table

Oyster tang, a misty salty morning,

sky ridged like the roof of a dragon’s mouth

grazing on lilies –

I am thinking of far blue islands,

crosscurrents deep in the sky, paua under rocks

and bronze kelp swirling,

flocks of muttonbirds skimming the water.

The black wings beat and glide above clear green.

North-east over trees and houses,

the harbour and dark blue hills

far and clear, pylons striding westward

to the power lodes of southern lakes.

Above us, Motupohue,

staunch full stop at the end of the land.

Chilly and sweet,

sunshine in Liffey Street.

Clouds flee and gather, darkening for rain,

wind whirls around the black hill

and slams down on the town,

sunlight blares through bright between indigo clouds.

At the kitchen table

my pleasure is handwriting

in lissom superconducting ink,

in silence but for the fire and the fridge.

The wind sings.

The borer are eating the house in tiny bites.

I sprinkle an oven tray with flour

like stars, like snow, remembering

being newborn, held in arms

and carried to the window to look out

at snow and stars in sheer delight.

Slow rain prickles on the iron roof

and then the roof dissolves, storm-sluiced.

A thunderbolt cracks over us,

writes lightning on the sky.

The wind in eaves, in walls and windows

draws a sound from everything it passes,

a meditation within the sound,

a voice, murmuring.

Within the tall quiet house

built of the heart of trees,

a poetry of memory and time.

There is a listening quality

of silence in the house.

Amethyst light in the hallway,

the sky outside like a gull’s wing.

Currents of grief and laughter

flow through days changeable as weather,

chaotic, fruitful, resonant – laughter and grief,

anger and tenderness, shadow and sunlight

chasing each other across the landscape.

Their supple vines weave back and forth

through time and wind-pierced weatherboards

to hold us all in a creel of love.

In time

things arrange themselves, patterns

evolve from chaos, times arch

from darkness into darkness,

etched by light, by love, laughter,

life’s abrasion.

Time is place.

The house sleeps, flames whicker

in the Shacklock No.1 (Improved) coal range,

her warm cast iron heart.

Spare old house, archaic, threadbare –

surely in its oblique dimension

the soul does not desiccate

as the body does with age,

but burns the brighter for long life.

The wind sings, the house listens.

I write at the kitchen table.

The law of Murphy reigns –

that what can happen, will,

and consequences bloom like clouds

beyond their butterfly cause,

resolving and dissolving

as if they never were

except for memory,

a star at the edge of sight.

In Liffey Street

time dimples and spins

like the surface of water.

From Markings (2000). After moving to live in Bluff (Motupohue), in the far south of New Zealand's South Island (Te Waipounamu) I was adjusting to a more Maori-oriented life than I had known hitherto, and a new phase of education in language and local history.

Riddles

i

my bone

takes my flesh

to your lips

my wings

sweep earth

from the earth

you walk

on my head -

my neck, your ankle

my jaws

hold down

the roof

dreaming

I cover you

like cloud

I burn,

illuminate your

feast of me

ii

'No part of the gannet is ever wasted'

Make a spoon of my breastbone

and of my wings a feather broom.

My head makes a soft shoe laced at the throat

my beak a stout peg, to anchor the thatch.

Featherdown is your bed in the storm.

I give strength to your body

and brightness to your  eyes -

your lamp is my clear oil flame.

From Soundings (2002). My ancestral links to the Scottish archipelago of St Kilda give me a feeling of connectedness with life in Bluff. I find parallels between this fishing community with its seasonal harvesting of titi (muttonbirds), its austere landscape and tightly-knit families, and that small St Kildan village perched on the remote island of Hirta in the Atlantic for more than two thousand years.

Stoat's Song

Flick of a sinuous body

in lounge suit. Teeth.

I find you deliciously musical,

O eggs, thrill

to throttle shrill cadences,

plumb your skinny holes!

Ah piteous nest

of silken flesh exposed

to my spry jaw,

soothe me and sing to me within!

Innocence drowns in my throat.

All the trees are empty.

Scarce leisure to preen the brows

of supple stoats, sated with song.

From Fire-penny (2005). Our native birds are being decimated by introduced predators.

An Imp

Not the tin shed in the empty section

nor the immediate white cat with the patch

on its side like a hole,

but the imp in my eye his eye spat.

Imagination closed on it

quick as a fist, a black spar.

It queers my inner sight.

It cannot be dissolved by time.

From Fire-penny (2005). Funny how an impenetrable glance can engrave itself indelibly in memory.

Red Herrings

Scribe a surface with a nib.

Represent in words a circle.

Inscribe (a geometric construction) inside (another construction)

so that the two are in contact but do not intersect.

Describe a membrane of supersymmetrical elementary particles.

Circumscribe a geometric construction around another construction

so that the two are in contact but do not intersect.

Ascribe beauty to truth.

From The Radio Room (2010).

The Hole

Measure a black thread.

Roll one end between forefinger and ball of thumb

to a small knot tangle.

Thread the other, moistened by lips to a point,

through the eye of the needle.

Consider the hole in the heel.

Engage with the sock.

Mercury’s wing would fit.

There is no ironic distance between us, Sock,

for I must remove my glasses

to obtain a microscopic view

of you.

             Is what I perceive as a void,

such as the void in Eridanus that intrigues me,

so from your viewpoint? Do you know

that you have nothing in you –

an unravelling place,

a shirking, Sock, of the looping continuous

cause that defined you, shaped your ideal,

but for the hole,

the void wherein there is no matter, not a skerrick?

I’d like to go to Eridanus when I die.

Meanwhile, darn it,

the steel tip needling in and out

between there and not-there, defines

edge where there was none, fell whereon

the latticework will be attached,

                                                      as is,

between the gutter and the house,

tautened the pragmatic architecture of spiders.

From The Radio Room (2010). I enjoy the way a poem can carry me from my earthly garden out to the far reaches of the universe, and back again.

Hauroko ii

With manuka brush and beech twig

I draw up into myself

the silver water and the blue-black mountains.

In writing, the action is forward, easy, practised.

The dream flows down through gates of language

in fluent handwriting to find contact with the world.

Drawing is otherwise - backward, not fluent,

incoming rather than outgoing,

drawing the outside into the dream within.

The right hand’s wrist twists in a peculiar way.

The left hand is clumsy and intuitive.

It takes an effort to hold and to direct the stick. 

I begin to learn the landscape.

There is resistance in the line. 

Accidents of ink occur.

From Markings (2000). When I don't feel like writing, I draw. It keeps the flow going and works in a different, but satisfactory, way.

Riddles iii

Who am I, with bulldozed flanks,

my hoard that rises and falls as ships gorge on me?

Resembling mountains, I contain forests.

Forest after forest they come, and are emptied.

Wind sculpts their dark gold hearts exposed.

Who am I, half-killed by chainsaw, shyly returning?

Crowds of miniature oval solar panels, a green hoard

safe in my basket-case, proof against browsing moa.

Shorn by wind on the hill, you might take me

for the shadow of a hunch.

Who am I now, suspended in mid-air?

I have worked all night to manifest my idea

with all the means at my command.

I wait quietly at the centre of my idea.

Published in the Otago Daily Times, 2012. The view from my study window is of a busy port. Daily I observe the stockpiles of woodchips ready for export, the native matagouri trees on the hillside, the busy domestic spider population.

A Slater

After a testing climb I reached the top.

But success was so dry, my carapace curled

around my segments

and my legs froze.

Not knowing where I had come from,

she tossed me out the window.

I was a slater of renown

I climbed ten stairs all on my own.

2013, a meditation on 'success'.

[all poems copyright, the author and Otago University Press]