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Critics Nightwatch -- Gwen Harwood

(Poem #173)Critics Nightwatch
 Once more he tried, before he slept,
 to rule his ranks of words. They broke
 from his planned choir, lolled, slouched and kept
 their tone, their pitch, their meaning crude;
 huddled in cliches; when pursued
 turned with mock elegance to croak

 his rival's tunes. They would not sing.
 The scene that nagged his sleep away
 flashed clear again: the local king
 of verse, loose-collared and loose-lipped.
 read from a sodden manuscript,
 drinking with anyone who'd pay,

 drunk, in the critic's favourite bar.
 "Hear the voice of the bard!" he bellowed,
 "Poets are lovers. Critics are
 mean, solitary masturbators.
 Come here, and join the warm creators."
 The critic, whom no drink had mellowed,

 turned on his heel. Rough laughter scoured
 his reddening neck. The poet roared
 "Run home, and take that face that soured
 your mother's lovely milk from spite.
 Piddle on what you cannot write."
 At home alone the critic poured

 gall on the poet's work in polished
 careful prose. He tore apart
 meaning and metaphor, demolished
 diction, syntax, metre, rhyme;
 called his entire works a crime
 against the integrity of art,

 and lay down grinning, quick, he thought,
 with a great poem that would make plain
 his power to all. Once more he fought
 with words. Sleep came. He dreamed he turned
 to a light vapour, seeped and burned
 in wordless cracks where grain on grain

 of matter grated; reassumed
 his human shape, and called by name
 each grain to sing, conducting, plumed
 in lightning, their obedient choir.
 Dressed as a bride for his desire
 towards him, now meek, the poet came.

 Light sneaked beside his bed. The birds
 began their insistent questioning
 of silence, and the poet's words
 prompted by daylight rasped his raw
 nerves, and the waking world he saw
 was flat with prose and would not sing.
-- Gwen Harwood

My Death -- Raymond Carver

(Poem #172)My Death
 If I'm lucky, I'll be wired every whichway
 in a hospital bed. Tubes running into
 my nose. But try not to be scared of me, friends!
 I'm telling you right now that this is okay.
 It's little enough to ask for at the end.
 Someone, I hope, will have phoned everyone
 to say, "Come quick, he's failing!"
 And they will come. And there will be time for me
 to bid goodbye to each of my loved ones.
 If I'm lucky, they'll step forward
 and I'll be able to see them one last time
 and take that memory with me.
 Sure, they might lay eyes on me and want to run away
 and howl. But instead, since they love me,
 they'll lift my hand and say "Courage"
 or "It's going to be all right."
 And they're right. It is all right.
 It's just fine. If you only knew how happy you've made me!
 I just hope my luck holds, and I can make
 some sign of recognition.
 Open and close my eyes as if to say,
 "Yes, I hear you. I understand you."
 I may even manage something like this:
 "I love you too. Be happy."
 I hope so! But I don't want to ask for too much.
 If I'm unlucky, as I deserve, well, I'll just
 drop over, like that, without any chance
 for farewell, or to press anyone's hand.
 Or say how much I cared for you and enjoyed
 your company all these years. In any case,
 try not to mourn for me too much. I want you to know
 I was happy when I was here.
 And remember I told you this a while ago - April 1984.
 But be glad for me if I can die in the presence
 of friends and family. If this happens, believe me,
 I came out ahead. I didn't lose this one.
-- Raymond Carver

I Hear a River Thro' the Valley Wander -- Trumbull Stickney

(Poem #171)I Hear a River Thro' the Valley Wander
 I hear a river thro' the valley wander
 Whose water runs, the song alone remaining.
 A rainbow stands and summer passes under.
-- Trumbull Stickney

Poetry -- Don Paterson

(Poem #170)Poetry
 In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
 one spark of the planet's early fires
 trapped forever in its net of ice,
 it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
 but the atom of the love that drew it forth
 from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
 begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
 suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful
 with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
 but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
 the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
 like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.
 
 Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
 sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.
-- Don Paterson