partita

partita

i hear
Bach at
his piano
i hear every
known beauty
and their sadness
in his perfection that
must like those
hands come
to rest
saved only
in the scrawl
along staves
he left in
a drawer for
other centuries
that would need
the measure
of his finger-fall
even more
than his
own

22 october 2018

Glen Gould interprets Bach’s Partita No. 6 in E-minor

Copyright © 2018 Peter Le Baige.  All Rights Reserved

skill

skill
to Yasunari Kawabata, japanese novelist

Portrait of Kawabata by Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh

you made and lacquered
the mask i wear.

sly craftsman to have
guessed my face ahead.

the wood fits
coldly as snow.

a space of flowers
the breeze had cluttered.

the earth around me,
through the wooden fix

of the eyes, a threshing

Taurere found

Taurere found

*Te Taurere, or Mt Taylor, a small volcanic cone visible from the other side of the Tamaki estuary where I grew up; it was not ever recognisable to me as volcanic cone or even clearly as a hill from there appearing more as a steep bank of green above the houses surrounding it. It was only these 40 something years later living on this side of the estuary that i first came across it on an unfamiliar road at midnight, and stood before it and climbed it; it seems one of Auckland’s least known volcanic cones outside of its surroundings.

went up
that shadow
Taurere
in the dark
of the midnight
hollow

trod the
dew-fresh
paddock
Taurere
my breath
steepening
in ascent

the shadow
crested out
in stars
Taurere
and estuary
glimmer loudening
with far lights

the shore i’d
grown round in
hearing sight