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Here in this moment when we watch the years
take their final steps on the tightrope of transition,
the past and the present, shrouded by nightfall,
touch fingers also in silent greeting.
Then and now overlap in this place.
I’ve known these walls twenty years,
coming here again and again as a child
to be enraptured by stories; those years are gone now.
But just for a moment the knife-edge of time
pares away the layers of now —
the Australian beer which shivers and warms
on the aluminium table before me,
the Vietnamese waitress, smiling and eager,
the plasma screens rattling with football —
and ghostly beneath, like a wrinkled slide’s image
projected on wavering air,
I see the dim phantoms of shelves full of books,
smell the damp paper, hear songs in two tongues.
The bar’s fairy lights fade out for a moment,
overlaid by the dimness of memory;
and then the vision is past, the new year is upon us,
and only a memory remains.

First there was the eagle —
an angel-shape carving a haughty half-circle
across the face of the evening sky,
then speeding westward. Flight steady and unswerving,
implacable, cutting through the still air
like a scalpel’s edge. Evening below felt routine:
a moment for weathered old men, couples,
tourist families. In the boathouse garden
a man and a woman, wrapped up in each other,
imprinting their embrace on the air.
Across Cavenagh Bridge then. Suddenly
everything became very quiet.
Everything shifted into sharper focus:
footsteps, a man’s smile,
a bicycle chain. The city as if sealed
behind a glass case, motionless, surrounded by silence.
Just for a moment the pulse of the whole world
stopped beating.

Then in the river, movement.
Bursts of water, sudden as fireworks. A fish leaping.
Archers, firing over and over —
each jet sudden as a muzzle-flash
but lacking the shock of recoil,
smoothskinned, silvered,
almost as if fish itself. Insects flying low,
out over the water. A band of halfbeaks
drifted over, waiting for scraps to fall,
hoping for a handout. And a catfish rose too,
from the river bottom — skin patched and leprous,
unbeautiful, covered from tip to tail in mud —
but eyes still sharp, every curve and sweep
of that soiled body concealing a hidden power,
a wicked invisible strength.
A riverine Odysseus, returning to Ithaca.
Burly tilapia swaggered up, proud in their iridescent glory —
he let them bully their way past him,
hound him even, a moment before
he clouded himself in mud from the riverbank
and vanished from their sight. The fish milled round,
uncertain. I turned, eyes taken by a sandpiper
on the brick steps out by the pubs —
racing up and down, almost dishevelled,
as if searching for something dropped. Over and over,
part eager, part flustered. And then,
like stars shivered softly out of the pale evening,
the first drops began to fall.

Evening shimmers in the quiet bowl.
Sloping sunlight stains the bamboo tray.
My weakened fingers tremble as they raise
each teacup to my lips; yet they obey,
and scent still rises sweetly through the air
in spite of me. I claim as mine this day,
this moment now. For in the year ahead,
good still may come, or evil; who can say?

Dark though the night is,
endless though it may appear,
yet I still believe
sometime in the eastern sky
new light and new warmth must rise.

Even our tallest
towers seem so small against
so dark a sky;
the taillights of your bus recede,
and night draws itself tighter

Over the sleek black tiles he glides,
a streamlined shadow, almost invisible
save for the way his body blots out
the pond’s floor. He moves, a dark shape lurking
openmouthed and ugly, hideous, a distortion of fish
as all around him gouramis rejoice in their prettiness,
bicker and kiss again. But he knows the truth,
knows the tyranny of beauty,
the cruelty that hides beneath each kiss.
He has left the pink swirl of politics and pettiness;
he has abandoned the deception of the world.

Now he seeks the Way in the algae and the scraps
that fall from the mouths of other fish;
subsists on alms, a monk, a madman,
dwelling at the bottom of it all,
his mind a patch of unwavering calm,
ready for everlasting life.

Eleven a.m., Sunday. Silver light
shines through my window, illuminates the strings
of my guzheng. Metal’s quiet sheen,
an unearthly radiance of bronze and green,
seems to hum electric through the air,
though nobody’s there
to play. For a moment all balances brimful of music,
a bucketful of clear water unspilled.
Then the light passes like an onrushing cloud,
and the sky widens, the air shifts just a little,
and beyond the window a fluttering
of pigeons’ wings.

You’re a flower garden in the dreary chill of winter;
here in the rainy season you’re a dry, clean-swept floor.
Beneath desolate skies, I taste the scent of blossoms;
amidst sodden roads, I go unstained by dust.
Though I’m at your side, I’m lost, a man enraptured,
not knowing if I’m walking in a dream…
Will winter turn to spring? Will this weary rain stop falling,
or will I wake to find no trace of you?

We’ve had three days and nights of constant, often torrential rain; we had some sun this morning, but now it’s wet again. It’s caused a huge amount of inconvenience, complete with flooding, fallen trees and overflowing reservoirs. Here are a few haiku to commemorate the occasion.

three days of rain now —
someone should tell the Wet Floor sign
it’s stating the obvious

~|~

rain dances, clouds dance —
but the world below, it seems,
only squelches

~|~

dusklit pools glimmer —
fitful, broken mirrors
of another world

~|~

cold lonely puddles
clutch at my trouser hems
and won’t let go

~|~

three days’ constant rain
give her the perfect excuse
for knee-high boots

~|~

rain falls and falls —
how endless the sorrows
of this December sky!

~|~

soaked teenagers
almost crash through sliding doors,
holding hands and laughing

~|~

rusting in the rain
carnival rides sit empty,
motionless, forlorn

~|~

wrapped in a raincoat,
cheeks and lashes pearled with dew —
so beautiful

As rain lightens, tentative, I push my windows open:
raindrops stain the panes, but the room stays dry.
Boiling water, I make tea — the last of the leaves;
settling down, I read poems in the evening light.
Cooking smells drift over from a kitchen nearby;
a passing breeze tarries for a moment in the curtains.
Three things, I’m sure, will linger in my mind:
the taste of tea, the sound of rain, the smell of fish frying.