Two Poems

Death as Smooth as a Baby

He’d have the gold jabbed into his knee,

it would spread golden pain inside his kneecap,

gold and arthritis would battle it out

in a cramped arena of nerve-endings;

and the gold would win, at least for a while,

so he’d keep coming back for more—

good as gold, some days, and mobile,

but running out of steam. At home in Australia,

but always White Russian, and stuck

in a monarchist dream.

The last day of his life we sat by his bed, a hospital

where night and day revolved around the shifts.

He was as peaceful as anyone sleeping—

and this is speculation—without the distraction

of dreams; he was an outgoing tide, though

no one could read the tables.

His wife was playing loud tragedy

the way they don’t over here. He had been

her life, and she felt entitled—

determined not to have him feel he was

undeserving of drama; plus, a rare chance

to get her way. Understanding little of this,

I’d used sensible words, pointless words,

unaware that the dying can hear us.

He had the most amazing skin

that had come out with him from Belgrade.

Australian sunshine had tanned it in time,

but couldn’t turn it to leather;

nurses would remark on its smoothness—

an eighty-year-old with that skin?

Skin that had weathered his last thirty years

better than bone or cartilage; a wax job

without any wax. Ah, but mortality rubs off—

realising our skin can’t save us,

we have to make other plans. 

Michael Sariban

Greeks Bearing Gifts

The Greeks, it seems, can live happily

with degrees of bitterness—

their resin-sharp wine that lightens the evening

but needles the unwary throat; their olives,

dark as funerals, that commandeer the tongue,

then surrender to goat’s cheese, or bread;

halva’s lugubrious sweetness, subverted

by sesame seed.

A harshness that cuts both ways—

half-sating a hunger, amplifying a need.

Streams of argumentation keep rising

from coffee black as pitch. Swallowed by

Turk and Greek, it lights a fire in the head,

replacing old pharmacopoeias,

the season of the witch.

When the last Trojan horse was sent out to graze,

ships had more latitude; new countries

began to dissolve on the tongue, new words

to flavour the language. It came down to

attitude. Sailors traded off leisure for pay,

and the world discovered haste.

Now trade winds have taken over the skies,

everyone’s up for the taste. 

Michael Sariban