A.R.D Fairburn

Selected Poems

A.R.D. Fairburn, Mac Jackson

• Publisher: Victoria University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780864737380
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Poet, wit and controversialist, A.R.D. Fairburn was one of the best-known New Zealanders of his time. This volume represents the full range and vitality of his verse. Accompanying the well known anthology pieces such as 'The Cave' and 'A Farewell' are ballads like 'Walking on My Feet' and 'The Rakehelly Man', as well as a generous selection of his early love lyrics.

DOMINION

For my wife

UTOPIA

I

The house of the governors, guarded by eunuchs,

and over the arch of the gate

these words engraved:

HE WHO IMPUGNS THE USURERS IMPERILS THE STATE.

Within the gates the retinue of evil,

the instruments of the governors:

scabs picked from the body of the enslaved,

well-paid captains and corporals

in the army of privilege

taking the bread of tyranny, wearing

the livery of extortion; and those who keep

the records of decay,

statisticians and archivists,

turning the leaves with cold hands, computing

our ruin on scented cuffs.

For the enslaved, the treadmill;

the office and adoration

of the grindstone god;

the apotheosis of the means,

the defiling of the end;

the debasement of the host

of the living; the celebration

of the black mass that casts

the shadow of a red mass.

Backblock camps for the outcast, the superfluous,

reading back-date magazines, rolling cheap cigarettes,

not mated;

witnesses to the constriction of life essential

to the maintenance of the rate of profit

as distinct from the gross increment of wealth.

II

In vicarage and manse

love is loose-lipped and flaps its feathers,

its talk is full of ifs and whethers,

spume of futility blown

from raging seas of sin

that lift and heave in the gales of chance,

beatified Nature, unhindered circumstance.

The Church Hesitant seeks for balm

in sunlit studies, a chatter of talk,

dead prayers and spurious calm:

and the dog-days claim for their own

the theological bone

the cracked and bitten shin

that can crawl but cannot walk.

III

In the suburbs the spirit of man

walks on the garden path,

walks on the well-groomed lawn, dwells

among the manicured shrubs.

The variegated hedge encircles life.

In the countryside, in shire and county,

the abode of wind and sun, where clouds trample the sky

and hills are stretched like arms heaped up with bounty,

in the countryside the land is

the space between the barbed-wire fences,

mortgaged in bitterness, measured in sweated butterfat.

IV

In this air the idea dies;

or spreads like plague; emotion runs

undamned, its limits vague,

its flush disastrous as the rolling floods,

the swollen river’s rush; or dries

to a thin trickle, lies

in flat pools where swarms of flies

clouding the stagnant brim

breed from thick water, clustered slime.

V

Gross greed, mated with fear,

that feeds on the bread

of children, buying reprieve

with philanthropic pence, making profession

of charity: the pitiful cunning of the depraved.

Small greed, the starveling weed

that grows in desperate soil

in the hearts of the enslaved,

hugging a bitten crust

with the closeness of a trust

clinging to an oil concession.

VI

The press: slow dripping of water on mud;

thought’s daily bagwash, ironing out opinion,

scarifying the edges of ideas.

And the hirelings; caught young;

the bough bent and twisted

to the shape of evil; tending the oaf

who by the accident of birth has property

in the public conscience, a ‘moulder of opinion’;

turning misshapen vessel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• WINDS
• MEETING
• SONG
• HELLAS
• RELEASE
• SINCE THAT ZENOPHILA
• SONG AT DAWN
• THE FLOWERS
• THE SUN HAS SPREAD HIS SHINING WINGS
• THE OLD BRIDGE
• WISH
• IN THE YOUNGER LAND
• KOWHAI
• EVENING
• AMARANTUS
• ODYSSEUS
• WANDERING WILLIE’S SONG
• ALL I HAVE DESIRED
• DIOGENES
• ODYSSEUS
• DEAD MAN’S TALE
• RHYME OF THE DEAD SELF
• DISQUISITION ON DEATH
• WINTER NIGHT
• ON ENTERING A NEW ABODE
• STRAW
• DESERTED FARMYARD
• EMPTY HOUSE
• THE SEA
• FIRST THINGS
• DOMINION
• TO DAPHNIS AND CHLOE IN THE PARK
• LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
• NIGHT SONG
• FULL FATHOM FIVE
• POEM
• A FAREWELL
• YES PLEASE GENTLEMEN
• MILTON
• GOOD AND ILL
• TAPU
• WELL KNOWN AND WELL LOVED
• LOVE SONG
• THE CAVE
• WILD LOVE
• THE REVENGE
• LAUGHTER
• THE RAKEHELLY MAN
• WALKING ON MY FEET
• NOON SONG
• SONG
• THE ENCOUNTER
• SONG AT SUMMER’S END
• EPITAPH
• FOR AN AMULET
• THE FALLEN
• TO A FRIEND IN THE WILDERNESS
• BEGGAR TO BURGHER
• TO AN EXPATRIATE
• LOGOS
• SOLITUDE
• THE ESTUARY
• NOW
• SONG FOR A GIRL
• SEA-WIND AND SETTING SUN
• TOM’S A-COLD
• I’M OLDER THAN YOU, PLEASE LISTEN
• TERMS OF APPOINTMENT
• DOWN ON MY LUCK
• NOTES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
• Copyright