ESTHER QUIN

 

Film Festival

 

What Broke and Became All Heart

My father lives in Lapland and shoots reindeer.
My mother roasts penguins at the South Pole.
I am the temperate zone.
They visit me to borrow lemons.

 

Fish & Chips with W. H. Auden

He shook his jowls
a little and found
good crafty words.

 

Te Awamutu Incident

Villa in a thunderstorm, the territory
of characters. Twice a year
it vanishes away.

 

Documentary

Suburbs full of husband and wife teams.
Beware the hydrangeas.

Old Testament Northland

 

Try to forget the wishing sea,
the salt and gorse bushes.
Weather is a tabernacle
borne by tired farmers.

They live from house-fire to
house-fire. Last week, what you
thought was sunset was
just heat open to heaven.

Islands wait each day
for a parting of waters
the exodus of seabirds,
an end to servitude.

This landscape is the great
false God only painters
believe in, their passionate scrutiny
poured into fallen colour.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Esther Quin is writing a PhD thesis about Bertolt Brecht’s influence on Bob Dylan. She took part in Greg O’Brien’s Poetry Workshop in summer 2000 and has been published in JAAM and PN Review.

 

Return to 2003 contents >