BRIAN HOLTON TRAVELLING IN NEW ZEALAND

every street is a translation    as you walk by
the empty lot    the ghost of an old demolished building might manifest itself
the sound of the sea's salty smell invite you

to drink a glass    sour beer brewed ten years in the kitchen
my lamp has burned ten years    my sea's surface
the inexhaustible lemon tree reaching toward the window
dyeing the beach black    embedded in my draft poems
you mistranslated a word    so an old-fashioned mangle
turns    sunlight drawing out a length of white cotton
some have gone mad    some have died

Sunday    nails far and near banged into the wood
the valley's green all prepared for the flute
beneath bird claws the rainy season about to start
sky turns dark    every cloud turns into a dead lamb
wild fennel scenting someone's evening

my    wildcat eyes seeing you off like a welcome
or your    fifty years of age broken down into fifty streetlamps
like a narrative ballad    building a bridge towards the old house
a hospital's galaxy only a little deeper than memory
driving ghosts brush by    when they glimpse the graveyard
go on shifting the position of an island among waves
if you want to cross the bridge you must travel three times
in translation    in verse    and in the landscape

a threefold distance escorts you back
to the cold and black summoning blood ties of ocean's kin

the real mother-tongue has no words    like mother
long ago knew you would be panting towards the white snow of the summits
or me    hidden in a body open to all
learning the seagull's cry    crying to pitch-black night open before my eyes
true loneliness hung with the sound of whistling on rocky edges
the wind rises    soul of the dead rising with the sound

mother knew long ago you'd be wrong again too
kids pricked into coniferous woods    should rejoice they can still be wrong
old flying houses can't be found on a tourist map
a dictionary of the past    you brought here yourself
a volcanic crater waits at the top of the creaking wooden stairs
what's never been written in words    leads you up
like this moment mother painted
you take off borrowed flesh and blood
go where no-one is to get good and drunk

ten years later I'm in London    thinking of that glass of wine
poured into the hurried silhouette on a marble headstone