An exiles soliloquy


Henley Pub? I am one year from
your death, and a mad mile from your
achievement twenty or so years
down the track. I think you may have
killed a few of us off, brother,
who rejoiced
in your thicket of sorrows. Jim Baxter,
if a cabbage tree marks your spot by
the river,
I am glad of it.
After you went, we were too eager
for another Apollo, and the laurel
was tossed from
hand to poetic hand like a hot kumara.
Most dropped it. A number were swept
by the winter river with the eels
into the Underworld.The God Love
and the God Vengeance sat down
in a burnt out warehouse to share out the
small morsels
of pain.
The poets are playing hide-and-seek
with each other in and out of marriage.
The sharing is done.
A southerly
whistles up over the gun emplacements on
Brooklyn Hill,Jim, scattering
the unposted Autumn leaves.