ZOË HIGGINS
End of the Berhampore Golf Course
Is the last golf course alive on this earth—
has the slopes to itself, the flags in love with precision
and each golfer pleasuring them. Has swish, has
dimpled plastic and the weight of niblicks.
Is the last barricade of England,
the golf course. At night golfers fill caddysacks with sand
and perimeter the final green.
The ocean has followed the old road. From above
come neighbours howling, snub-nosed trowels
and pitchforks, faces tricked out in leaping seedlings.
All other golf courses now have rotted,
all other golf courses now are fathoms low,
all other golf courses now have blossomed. Melon flowers
drench the fourteenth greens. Sorghum surges
up fairways and gardeners plant looms of yellow beans.
The last golfer on the last green of the Berhampore,
sweating now, sees green faces in the gaps of caddysacks,
sees kūmara vines, sees kawakawa fresh-hearted.
Huddled in the perimeter is holding his club, the last
barricade of England. He wants stillness, an afternoon
how they used to hang. He is crouching below the barricade,
has been crouching this crouch for such centuries that
his legs tremble when he stands.