Graeme Hetherington: Two Poems

Constitutional

(George’s Bay, St Helens, Tasmania)

A thrilling elegance of curve

Seductive as a woman’s hip

Thrust out, a corner on the track

Skirting the bay is blind and brings

The black stampeded horses of

Hippolytus as suddenly

To mind as they might sweep around

And trample, and of course the train

On top of Tolstoy’s heroine

Before she knew it, and Nietzsche,

Who without warning on a bend,

Confronted by a rearing mare

Being mercilessly flogged, flung

His arms about her and went mad.

And so I bypass on my walk

A bench located there, my gran-

Dad resting on one having been

Out of the blue struck down by death.

For St John of the Cross, Segovia

Around the Convent of St John

It’s still the dark night of the soul

With ravens flying in and out

Of crannies in a flesh-hued cliff,

Or else, watchful as hangmen’s hoods

They perch in lopped bare trees below.

Graeme Hetherington