SPECTACULAR BLOSSOM
M OCK up again, summer, the sooty altars Between the sweltering tides and the tin gardens, All the colours of the stained bow windows. Quick, she'll be dead on time, the single Actress shuffling red petals to this music, Percussive light! So many suns she harbours And keeps them jigging, her puppet suns, All over the,;dead hot calm impure Blood noon tide of the breathless bay. -Are the victims always so beautiful? Pearls pluck at her, she has tossed her girls Breast-flowers for keepsakes now she is going For ever and astray. I see her feet Slip into the perfect fit the shallows make hér Purposefully, sure as she is the sea Levels its lucent ruins underfoot That were sharp dead white shells, that will be sands. The shallows kiss like knives. -Always for this.. They are chosen for their beauty. Wristiest slaughterman December smoothes The temple bones and parts the grey-blown brows With humid fingers. It is an ageless wind That loves with knives, it knows our need, it flows Justly, simply as water greets the blood, And woody tumours burst in scarlet spray. An old man’s blood spills bright as a girl’s On beaches where the knees of light crash down. These dying ejaculate their bloom. -Can anyone choose. And call it beauty’?-The victims Are always beautiful.
Allen
Curnow
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 810, 4 February 1955, Page 14
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223SPECTACULAR BLOSSOM New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 810, 4 February 1955, Page 14
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
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