Selected Poems by Kendrick Smithyman

Author:Kendrick Smithyman [Smithyman, Kendrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Poetry
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 1989-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Reflections from Golden Gate (1)

The State’s at war, where the front forms.

Before the Park’s wildcats strike,

before these cats become

insensibly one hungering shadow,

we shall take a bus downtown and go

to the Mission Dolores. There, it began

where Scots, Irish, Germans pack a yard

together. They flower like shrubs.

Scaled down, authority crowded west

to, from, the California lilacs’ breed

rooted in gold dust. Everything that lay

west has learned to force this golden gate.

Everything west from here was sometime forced.

In which, we share.

All will come (you cannot say) home.

In a finest manner so to speak, we are

already halfway home when sauntering

among hybrid leptosperms. We ride

through boulevards pohutukawas fire.

Between the Legion of Honor’s palace

and the Presidio we rode. Rule of law:

a Rodin Penseur in a court, back turned

on a stockade. Winged Victory, silvered slim

geometer’s fantasy, points the Pacific

like a hunter cat. The swallows dive,

swallows skim each pool of shadow.

Other cats, they prowl McAllister.

Black berets, beards in Market Street.

Intended irony is not their style.

A movie house spills out the track of Che.

Marines with zoom lenses, time-expired,

gobs from Enterprise, drift towards

Grant and Stockton. Diminished

responsibility, they do not bear

their war; which we share. Lady of Sorrows,

we do not go slimhipped, not panther wise.

The State’s at war but scarcely guesses

where the front forms. On some valley floor’s

pasture yet warm with heats of day

boys lie relaxed to let their sweats go dry.

So still, they could be dead; they soon may be.

Force of law hardly discriminates

these days one from another. The cats

shadow like motives, ours. Like dishonour,

contracted to it, which they understand.

And do not understand.

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