Poetry

Charlotte Clutterbuck

Charlotte Clutterbuck lives in Canberra and writes essays and poetry. Her collection of poems, Soundings, was published by Five Islands Press in 1997. She won the Romanos the Melodist Prize for religious poetry in 2002 and the David Campbell Prize in 2009.

 

 

 

auxiliaries

 

There were causes:

 

            we could have

            we should have

            we might have

            we weren’t

            we mustn’t have

 

and also:

 

            I did and

            I could be

I was but

            I shouldn’t have been

 

not to mention:

 

            he might have

            he wouldn’t

            he was but

he couldn’t

           

But these facts remain

 

I am not there

 

I am here

 

I will not be there when he hears

 

I live at the periphery of what used to be central

the Hume Highway is long

my back aches as much as my heart.

 

    

building

 

this first year

foundations – taking sights

laying out lines

 

ceremony of first sod

spadefuls of loam

barrowed away for turnips

 

pickaxe and crow

dislodging old coins

a smashed teapot

 

the builders’ dogs

faithful or busy, eyeing

each other, settling

 

rain setting in

overnight, trenches

full of muddy water

 

thud and shock

jackhammers

juddering rock

 

burnt and sweaty

shoulders heaving

rubble to surface

 

hands blistered

bruised and scratched

with limey soil

 

only in minds’ eyes

Satan flying west    

on judgment door

 

mermaids on misericords

under baritone bums

sopranos shifting

 

spirits above

transcept into a spire

that’s yet to be

 

    

flat earth

 

I’ve stepped off the edge of my life

a contortionist’s tangled legs and arms

flailing, the music of the spheres rude

with shock, feathers drifting down

onto flattened vestiges of garden

 

I twist my neck to see

my crumpled limbs

through other people’s telescopes

unbalancing profit and loss

I knew but did not know the costs

could not preempt these doubts

 

peremptory love under spring boughs

bring me a cup of tea

kiss my cold shoulders and feet

tell me there’s no rabbit trap

pressing into my skull

 

let your voice and fingers

keep telling me of the wild place

somewhere in the mountains

where sparks from a twilit

bonfire fly above these jagged slopes