David Gregory

David Gregory is an editor for Sudden Vallery Press and a member of the Canterbury Poets Collective. He has published three collections of poetry, most recently Push (Black Doris Press, 2008). With Coral Atkinson he edited the anthology Land Very Fertile: Banks Peninsula in poetry and prose (Canterbury University Press, 2008). David lives in Governors Bay, New Zealand.

Those Things You Name

At my age, he said,

each day is a gift.

Well, thanks to that

anonymous donor who

ties up each morning

with the pain

of stiffened limbs.

But, not to be ungrateful,

some evenings he

walks us back down

the feebly lit pathways

of old nerves, to those clean

rooms of recollections,

dusted of doubt; the

intricate models of memory,

where the old stories

run to schedule

in perfect landscapes.

He does not need

to wake to the strange

crowds of words

that fill the language

he used to know;

the buildings demolished

and names attached

to unfamiliarities.

The maps on the backs

of his hands

are complete.

Limit

He thought he could carry

all his needs, tent, sleeping bag,

some dehydrated words

needing a litre of experience

to swell their meaning.

A small portable love;

caring for yourself when others

release you with a half goodbye,

an easy turning away

in cities where the walls

are made of sound,

humming to themselves to stave off

the slithering night, a sucking silence.

He passed the last house days ago,

the poverty of its garden

patched against the golden hills.

Now walks like prey

in a thunder of nothing,

leaving no trail

as he sheds the weight of description

before those wordless vistas

that can become the names of god,

become a paranoia of such emptiness

all the eyes of no one are upon you;

where his name blows away

days before the search begins.

from Frame of Mind (Sudden Valley Press, 1997)

Ash Street Afternoon

There was a tree here

sucking the asthma air

where the coughing miners went

deeper than the prising roots,

white worm fingers

grasping the darkness.

There was a tree here

drinking the vinegar rain

where the steelworks storm

drummed the day, lensing the sun

as the day shift

clicked cobbles home.

There was a tree here.

Now, in the clear light

stepping the day in shadows

from the air harp of the chimneys,

the quiet pit head,

it is ash.

The Terrible Truth, The Beautiful Lies

Put your spine to the

grass and tell me a sky

make it an eye for an eye

blind blue in a socket of

hills it cries a river where

fish rise to kiss reflections

of lovers by the white town

in green fields a church at

its centre doors open where

prayers exhale a bride and

people throw shapes from

bags of wishes in the alley

where you have put the beggars

they are beating a mule

burdened stubborn and sterile

nothing will come of this

The Final Europe

It is stuffed with things

dead before the birth of memory;

a soil of people in fine gardens,

the sky stolen from a gallery

during one of  the wars

they had like bad weather

and the holy days of blood.

And some came home

with all their arms, but dreams

broken in both eyes.

All holidays must end

or they would cease to be.

Like that lake that is only now

the shock of diving

and a spool of undeveloped film.

And this plane on trajectory

to this unexplored innocence,

finding that hands have touched

all the secret places.

           

Gladly To Church

In gods weak light I stand

remembering the childhood miracle;

chilblains from the iron cold floor.

Alive, though gripped

with graveyard chill

as memories hymns float up.

Within these limestone walls,

this shell of souls,

the blessed certainties compress.

No doubts beneath benevolent glass grin,

wan winter apostolic smile,

eastward above unaltered cross,

those arms embracing agony,

painstakng for an effortless faith,

floating on certainty.

Green underwater windows

sink me without trace.

Kneeling, the prayers a swimming stroke

back to boyhood,

where I had joy in that old hymn

"Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear."

           

Open Only In A Disaster

Inside

there will be

instructions on reassembling

the world

my mother

a shrink wrapped

breakdown

packets of disposable

sunsets

a light opera

inflatable ego

repair kit

with adhesive smiles

for my father

for stillborn babies

a first aid

solitude

pieces of the view

from your window

boxes of clouds

lined with silver

plastic bags of euthanasia

a collapsible stairway

to heaven

tiny tablets of famine

and a list

of what I should have said to you

before removing the lid.

         

Inside Your Short Stories 

for Margaret Atwood

           

It is cold in here,

inspite of fur coats,

erratic central heating

and South America.

Swimming in the English sea,

skin shrinking scramble,

stinging towel and tea.

Familiarities,

fumbling car keys, conversations.

Thoughts as breath;

odd pairs

of warm gloves.

When did your first snow fall,

and will there be flowers in my Spring?

Domino Dogs

It is so quiet here

that when the wind picks the moment

to hold its peace,

you can hear the relay of the dogs

tumbling voices answering

the stones rumble

from the approaching car.

The first shouts from a

farm at the turn-off,

and the baying passes

down the dirt road

to the finish line

a white house,

its back against the valley wall,

cornered by the climate.

Now something in this glaucoma darkness,

where the rooms blindness waits for touch,

wakens me to stand,

by the meniscus window,

judging the second dogs voice,

known by its throttling chain.

But no grind or motor mutter

drifts along the road.

Only the domino dogs,

toppling towards my door.

Upon the Revision of Opinion Concerning Thomas Hardy

I saw your country

under a winter of your own description;

the caste marks of the churches

upon the rigid land;

an apology of sun

denying a later harvest.

All this was as it should be.

But bad for business.

So I sold the swings

in the trade gazette,

the roundabouts at auction

fetched a tidy profit

breaking the bane of your quotation.

Now I find other climates,

maybe not worth a hundred pages;

lightweight,

a smile

and the children

asking to go

down to the fair.

          

from Always Arriving (Sudden Valley Press, 1999)

In many ways the sea lies

He loved the sea

Past tense

already

you see wreckage

The sea did not love

does not

never

loves

Is guilty

of family violence

even when drugged

by the sun

The trials of the sea

are without verdict

The jury

are not convinced

by the family snapshots

by the poetry

the dead albatross

the warnings given

by the lighthouse.

Previously unpublished

Push

He has found the green door at last,

in a faded, jaded street.

And, slightly askew, it reflects

the slant of his memories.

Behind it, there might be a childhood,

if he could only reach the handle,

and against the glass

(the sunlit blood of stained glass roses)

there is the shadow of his father.

And the hallway builds back

into those small rooms.

In that one the faces turned

like flowers to the sun of her entrance.

That beautiful woman who spilt his love

easily as tea, and he only 

the second best china.

But listen, there is his mother singing,

and a chorus of relatives rehearsing

their relatively small disagreements.

How much? He asks the scrap-yard dealer.

Well, the man says,

these things don’t come cheap.

No Pictures

Only a short stretch of the imagination,

some frayed rope of road tying the house

down in the landscape, where the mountains

peer through curtained rain.

Give up on the day. After all nothing is happening,

You looking up at them looking out.

Some days these hills are like a crowd to a child,

with not much space between their huge approach

and the mad sea, chewing the land,

discarding the sucked bones of trees.

So, no pictures please, nothing quite captures

what you want to remember;

the sun pushing holes in the clouds

to let the light walk free across the hills.

from Push (Black Doris Press, 2008)

The Akwizgran Discrepancy

Only the finest penmanship

brought us here,

among the trees of Akwizgran.

They signed the Treaty;

all the arrangements of the world:

the fine teak table, top hats, uniforms,

unbending spines and us,

splintered between borders.

Our only state, that of being:

Our reason for existence:

that we did not exist at all.

It brings us so much:

comfort, money,

the complete security

of being nowhere,

Akwizgran’s summer beauty,

devoid of forecasts,

all the café tables filled with those

who, for a few short hours

drink in our amikejo,

are free of wars and taxes;

the benefits of nations.

Note

The area, also known as Neutral Moresnet or ‘the Akwizgran Discrepancy’ was a separate territory between 1816 and 1920. It came into existence after the demise of the Napoleonic empire, and was sandwiched between the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Prussia. When in 1830 Belgium gained independence from the Netherlands, a four-country point (Vierländerpunkt) came into being .  Today it is part of Belgium, but the position of its borders are marked on a paved area around the present day three-border point (Drielandenpunt). The residents themselves, who became the first citizens to adopt Esperanto as their national language, preferred to call their enclave ‘Amikejo’ (‘Friendship’ in Esperanto).

Previously unpublished