Moth Hour

Anne Kennedy

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781776710485
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A complex, moving and ambitious poetic engagement with the death of a brother. The family didn't know what to do about grief. The noisy house went silent. I was fourteen. I lay on the red rug in the sitting room and listened to Beethoven's Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, op. 120 – over and over because it was there. In 1973, Anne Kennedy's brother Philip was partying on a hillside when he accidentally fell to his death. Among books and records, Philip left a poem typed in Courier on thick, cream, letter-sized paper. Come catch me little child And put me in a jar... In Moth Hour, Anne Kennedy returns to the death of her brother and the world he inhabited, writing ‘Thirty-Three Transformations on a Theme of Philip' and concluding with a longer poem, ‘The Thé'. Kennedy's extraordinary poems grapple with the rebellious world of her brother and his friends in the 1970s; with grief and loss; with the arch of time. The poems reach into the threads of the past to build patterns, grasped for a moment and then unravelling in one's hands. Moth Hour is a complex, ambitious piece of writing and a moving poetic engagement with tragedy.

THIRTY-THREE TRANSFORMATIONS ON A THEME OF PHILIP

THE THEME

Come catch me little child

and put me in a jar.

Place inside:

some leaves (for me to eat)

The Book of Tea (for me to read)

some paper,

any paper

and a pen (for me to write)

Screw on the top,

little child,

and put six airholes in the lid,

then leave me on your windowsill.

Just one more thing,

little child,

look through your sunset hair

into my world

before I die

and collect your imaginary mind.

Philip Kennedy c. 1970

THE TRANSFORMATIONS

1.

The thing in the jar

always dies!

The rice cooker steams

so the sun goes down

Deep in the house

sepia gathers

The pencil has eaten

the fragile book

2.

(for me to eat)

in the first place

a gulp of air

please give me

the meaningful paper

(for me to read)

the spider’s web

at its centre

a black dot

the moon is setting

(for me to write)

a strange dream

transformed

in fuzzy pencil

the lampshade ticks

with moth bodies

(for me to walk)

the seam on a shirt

the purple arteries

of the city streets

(for me to want)

to know you always

invisible thing

throw three coins

to find the changes

3.

catch me / if can

think think / if can’t

if can / a jar

if not / an air

take my hand / if can

if can’t / second thoughts

in a garden / if there

if not / a room

think think / if can

if can’t / dream

any dream / any jar

any number / reasons

hold me / any me

in the first place / if can

the second place / is

the whole / fucking point

in a jar / if can

if can’t / imagine

4.

The new sun rushes

the dead trees

Your white breath moves

in and out of the lung duplex

I put my thoughts

on the Kingsland train

A family with boxes tumbles

in and out of the shaky real estate

At the edge of the lawn

a plastic letterbox

like a Venus flytrap

eats a letter from the courts

Apples plummet

from a split bag

the floor awash

with bruises and freedom

A child’s face

remembers the bedrooms

the released cat

fights its new neighbourhood

The garden path

leads to the garden

all roads

to the brother’s sunset

5.

Some footsteps any footsteps

some garden any garden

jar any jar

this jar

Some paper any paper

a pen any pen

room any room

this room

Read some feed any feed

drink wine any red

laugh any laugh

this rage

And if some body any body

arch any back

lift any belly

but this sweat

At some party any party

this crowd any dance

witch any Sabbath

but this death

6.

Tamarillos ornaments on the kitchen sill

all day red and all day warm

as touch

as factory

by the cool glass, the white paintwork

all the trouble begins.

7.

Coming down off the spine of the botanical gardens

onto the green flank of the dragon, shadows arch

under my feet. In the dell below, the shell-shaped stage

is strewn with red camellias. November

and across the valley on the dense dark Tinakori Hill

houses begin to light up like Guy Fawkes.

At the top of Patanga Crescent the pared-down villa

trembles with young men thinking,

pens lost in the wide sleeves of their dead uncles.

They are ecstatic and do everything extravagantly

in the last light: read, drink, fuck.

On the windowsill – a stone, leaf, a twig with buds,

and the black cat left behind mewling by the old lady

now in the Home of Compassion. No change.

8.

They drink the contents of houses in the subdivisions

a glittering view of the harbour while the Gatsby-dads

are up at the beach. The boys from Saint Pats town,

where they raised them up and tore them down

like statues – the grey angles of their uniforms – who saw

the spectre of the little nun collecting for the poor,

find they have a great love for the transubstantiating

power of plenty. Their placards rest in the passage:

Stay Away LBJ. Sometimes they come down long enough

to need drugs to sleep at night. Every so often

I meet a boomer who was at the party on the hill

that night – a girl dancing bare...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Thirty-Three Transformations on a Theme of Philip
• The Thé
• Pattern/Chaos: An Afterword
• Notes
• Acknowledgements