Like melting snow
my landscape changes
with constant warmth

Morning malaize
that lasts
until sunset

Your vibrations of sleep
lull me
to a safer place

In coastal forest
a golden light
ascends

Too much depends
on the way you look at me
how you respond

And then it snowed
and it felt okay
to be so cold

Like sparks from a new years’ bonfire
I’ll glow, rise
vanish

I’m always short-sighted at twilight
the city blurs and yet I remain clear
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

Edges halo and hues will highlight
my squinting vision, my deciphering stare.
I’m always short-sighted at twilight.

Focus on keeping thoughts upright
beaming faces beam only when near
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

The evening greys remain still, bright
and the thrill of late birds I can hear
but I’m always short-sighted at twilight.

My pulse is the flickering street light
the haze is diffusing my fear
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

Auburn tinted with dark grey and night
I walk, I glow, I peer
I’m always short-sighted at twilight
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

© Saradha Koirala 2009

Not by killing or through her own fragility

by bringing in lizards from the garden.

Play things. Hidden under the rug

she gives them away

with her sniffing interest.

Mostly I coax them onto the dustpan

to carry gently outside. Or I find them later

dusty in corners and stiff.

Heads curled under

tails missing

light.

So light the breeze takes them

before I make it to the rose bush.

© Saradha Koirala 2009

In my performance-best dress of blue gingham, lace trim and full-frill, my hair brushed and cheeks flushed, I scratch at my violin (I only know one tune) to a full room in June on the other side of the world. A fat blue sponge is my shoulder rest and coloured stickers guide my fingers sharp or flat.

My brother watches and shooshes, as I did when he stood. Poe-faced, he read a poem from home and we all laughed at the quardle-oodle-ardle the wardle and the doodle. But his recitation had such conviction and a concert means we’re leaving soon.

We’ve been the only children for miles in this bleak Birmingham borough, this house full of Quakers and travellers. And perhaps in this whole country, where school is punishment, school lunch detention, and singing on the bus not allowed.

We’ll be six and eight forever in the photos we took. Sitting in train stations, standing by landmarks, pointing beneath street signs of places we’ve been, places we’re headed, and those which remind us of home.

Now we must pack our souvenirs: buttons and badges from the British Museum, T-shirts of Buckingham Palace, of Postman Pat, his Royal Mail van and his black and white cat. The poems we wrote in the laundromat.

We arrived in homemade jerseys, homespun and bark-dyed, we’re leaving now in summer, pale faced and dark eyed.

My brother’s been living beneath the bones of Whataitai
a skeleton brought up by a fault line.
He watches rugby at The Realm.

In the morning we take the ferry to Matiu/Somes
and walk along the ridges
never once spotting tuatara.

Mokopuna Island remains in shadow
cast by its own caves.

Kakariki fly over the gun emplacement
where we sit and eat sandwiches
among the scattered remains of a seagull.



© Saradha Koirala, from Wit of the staircase (Steele Roberts, 2009)

by Simon Armitage
Living alone, I’m sailing the world
single-handed in a rented house.
Last week I rounded the Cape of Good Hope,
came through in one piece;

this morning, flying fish
lying dead in the porch with the post.
I peg out duvet covers and sheets
to save fuel when the wind blows,

tune the engine so it purrs all night
like a fridge, run upstairs
with the old-fashioned thought
of plotting a course by the stars.

Friends wave from the cliffs,
talk nervously about the coast-guard station.
Under the rules, close contact
with another soul means disqualification.

© Simon Armitage 1997, from The Whole of the Sky