Keith Murray

THE ETERNAL DOG OF MY FEAR

Muffled barking, distant dog
Chained to the torrential rain,
The tarpaulin wind that lifts roofs away,
Blows canvas tents inside out.
There is nothing he can do
To salve the crematorial drizzle,
The aftertaste of the wake,
How, so often it happens,
How frequently he barks,
But he is distant, and yet so near,
I fear he may be barking just for me,
But still I light my tent, for now,
With the most delicate glow of the oil lamp,
The planned time it takes to burn.

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A DAY IN THE COUNTRY

Perhaps we were never really there,
Or if we were, then wasn't it good.
Our moods were caught perfectly,
Our faces unhurt by the past and
So unconscious of the future.
We were forever removed from disappearance,
Welcome guests of the Box Brownie,
Staying a split second in a small dark chamber
Where we arrived and departed with light and bramble,
Our rusty Commer van waiting by the gravel road
That like us in this old photograph
Seems just ready to be taken.

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THE JOKE FACTORY

The master baker has leukaemia
But still wears his hat for his fame,
For the days he drank whiskey
And for the times his recipes touched hearts.

The school-bus driver is absent,
Just for today he will get better,
All the children will wear their own masks,
They will skip with the wind.

The newly-weds below the hill are fully awake,
They wait until dawn, eagerly,
Then together list all the shapes –
Their tangled sheets, the crusted fluids.

The post-man filters mail from near and far,
This morning a wedge of bills for the tax-dodger,
A birthday card for the little girl with cancer,
A postcard from Jadphur fingerstained with curry.

And through it all the post-mortems pile up
And are growing,
While down in the basement the grave-digger enjoys a joke
With the coffin-maker and his wife.

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END OF MISERY

The whole world is celibate,
No war will recreate
The vague and present shock,
Real hunger, real pain fade to time
With great architecture left to rot,
The gentle art of love a museum piece
No one will visit,
Books with closed wings
Stand like shutters on the shelves
As the last of us shed tears of dust,
Hearts' final quizzed out darkest hour
The sun pulls away a single strand of light
Snapping the connection
Spectacularly bright,
There are no more ghosts
Bringing up the night.

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SO GOOD

Today feels like the first day of Spring,
It's good to be alive,
The sun has kissed our faces
With proud licks of margarine,
The flowers have unlocked themselves
From deep Australian sleep
While even the retired Japanese man in his long
Columbo coat
Helps smash with me ethnic boundaries by tapping love
poems out for
Unfiled and incongruos human beings laughing with this
beautiful day We call Newfoundland.

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HELEN

You said that your favourite tree was Fir.
That was in the winter of 1965.
I try to avoid identifying a Fir tree
Like an addiction
Because your eyes confessed a kind of magic
That long ago evening in the way you said "Fir Tree"
The words seemed to slip from your lips
Like a silver spoon captured in the Christmas firelight
And so every Fir Tree in the world should belong to you
Although sometimes I am tempted
To search for what I have forbidden myself from knowing
That singular possession you treasure so much
That should be yours and yours alone.

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WOMAN

Survival taught her
That liberation was not enough
Back in the days
When rough seas and high winds
Bought lives for tragedy
To linger in her mind for years to come
Though hope remained a distant star to touch.
She accepted the tides of inevitability
With a brave smile that could never however
Add or subtract even a microcosm of time
To all her suffering, all her dreams
That, when her span was over,
Just as it began,
The sorrows were already in place
Together with that elusive star
She perhaps has returned to, or has yet to reach.

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