By Michael Farrell.
Imagine a line like a rolled petal, darker than blood, brown at the edges.
If you have an orderly mind, it might seem like a dignified end, rather
than dropping unceremoniously (but who is to say what a ceremony
can be?) from a vase. The president keeps his roses close to his chest,
their fragrance trapped in their tight structure, yet a little is released
each time he opens the tin. Is there a more delightful invention than
a clock? We pry apart and leap through the hours using its two
wiper-like hands: hands that really do feel the pressure of time.
Imagine this stanza as upside down. There is no need, then, for it to
be written upside down. Readers are ready, for what is not complete
novelty: it is only novelty within this poem and book. The heel
and snout are reversed. The root supplants the bloom. To use
a human or sunflower – rather than a pig – figure. How flexible are we?
Can we invert our days in order to find more metaphorical truffles?
Hedonists are adept at this. Tyrants have others turned upside down
for the keys to safes in their pockets. Or for a key to a room full of art.
Long lines suggest death, when piled upon each other. How deep, you
ask, can we bury them? Deep enough to find water? There is no use for
rhetorical questions underground. Stand guard on yourself, watch
a myth trickle into the next century. Yesterday I saw Death cross
the road holding a picture of the Madonna over their face. Curious.
Yet it is not death I want to conclude with, but with the unrectangular
face of Jacinda Arden, who made of terrorists nonentities. The shape
of New Zealand (or of any landmass), is an awkward one to bury.
