Constantinos Karavias: Brindabellas

Brindabellas

If that peat wasn’t searing infrangibly
or that dorsal cleft of fire
sifted vacancy, that drum would echo
with stars like a delirium of highways
and the warmth of the night would fumigate the clearing
with a monsoon of mosquitoes.

But the drum rumbles stably
and marbles the thick air
like a manicurist’s file flashing and muttering,
and the trees weep only the crackle of shed leaves
into the gathering.

We may walk away from the intimate circle
long enough to catch the evening’s cold
and return it suppliantly to the graceful fire
and bathe our limbs in the tender heat of its shallows.

Or we may wander up a high stretch of road
out of the clearing
and find ourselves among lambent suburban streets
and leaning casually on a cold frond of cars
discuss things that affirm their weight
even in the whistling hollows of evenings.

And we may sear stably into the morning
and let the sun pass much of itself
before like a log in a clearing like a fire rising.

But the evening deliberates
from its own assumptions of direction and exchange
and brings the morning flowing
like a white doona over the peregrinations of the fire.

Constantinos Karavias