gravel

gravel
sydney, june 2000

On into the low evening… a Weathercat snap at tail of day

where things rested, they now fall.
wisps of cloud wash out like
the coming of final secrets
against the lighter cloud above.
rain from the sky of cloud
wakes on the evening
you know an inkling
______in its cold
through the leaves
wonder if you can stay
_______the dark.
rain like a vision of
_______gentleness lost
against things.
you stand in against
_______the trunk of
a tree whose branches
weigh like sleep

corridors

corridors
acropolis/sounion/delphi/aegina
february 1984

The Parthenon, Athens, with acknowledgements to the art site smarthistory.com for use of this image.

	 			
perhaps they paused on the
scaffolding at the sky's bare cut
	on lintel, threshold /
corridors through which the 
    summer swelled / the sea
	hammered its metal.
saw cloud bathe the ridge of imittós
	in thunderous sweat.
recognised the chaos again
their gable had severed / blocked in 
                  the goddess's sanctuary
         kiss of flame at her hem.

they passed as time's measure
		upon time,
left a greater ruin  /  an
architecture no-one dreamed
	         no-one crafted
such as sky intends.
this camera of bridging stone.

Copyright © 1986 Peter Le Baige. All Rights Reserved.  Taken from my own collection ‘street hung with daylit moon’ published 1986; acknowledgements to Chamaeleon Press

Click on the link above to hear a reading of the poem.  The accompanying music is from B’ (Second) Delfikos Ymnos (Organikon) from the album ‘Music of Ancient Greece’ by Christodoulos Halaris, a Greek composer and scholar in the field of the reconstruction of Byzantine and ancient Greek music.

the fall

the fall
january 1983

Painting by the Polish painter, photographer and sculptor, Zdzisław Beksiński, as sourced from Pinterest.

dawn would break
the knife-end of
a fall and flight
through streets,
the buildings draped
with hessian.

i would shut my eyes,
summon the depth again,
fall until the ledge
stood me upright.

it did not foretell
the nightmare
this much later:
days to know myself
a ghost
no beauty no gravity
could bend

Copyright © 1986 Peter Le Baige. All Rights Reserved.  Taken from my own collection ‘street hung with daylit moon’ published 1986; acknowledgements to Chamaeleon Press

Click on the link above to hear a reading of the poem.  The accompanying music is from the second piece, ‘An Expert In Human Passions’, from the choral work ‘Choir Concerto’ by Alfred Schnittke, and performed here by the Russian State Symphonic Choir; the text is taken from the third chapter of the Book of Lamentations by the medieval Armenian theologian, poet, musician and philosopher, Grigor Narekaci (951 – 1003 AD).