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    Vanishing Points
    Vanishing Points
    Vanishing Points
    Ebook130 pages1 hour

    Vanishing Points

    By Michele Leggott

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    About this ebook

    It's an optical amusement, a punctured surface letting light pour through holes cut out of the picture. Moon, army tents and the windows of houses and St Mary's church glow or flicker with luminance. Between them move women and children as well as soldiers. Steamers, a brig and a schooner ride on the moonlit sea. Part and not part of the scene is the artist's son, who lies three days buried in the churchyard at the foot of the hill where his father sits sketching the arrival of imperial troops. Now walk away from the painting when it is lit up and see how light falls into the world on this side of the picture surface. Is this what the artist meant by his cut outs? Is this the meaning of every magic lantern slide? Vanishing Points concerns itself with appearance and disappearance as modes of memory, familial until we lose sight of that horizon line and must settle instead for a series of intersecting arcs. It is full of stories caught from the air and pictures made of words. It stands here and goes there, a real or an imagined place. If we can work out the navigation the rest will follow. Michele Leggott's new collection is full of history and family, lights and mirrors, the real and the surreal, now articulated through a powerful amalgam of prose poems and verse.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateOct 23, 2017
    ISBN9781775589594
    Vanishing Points
    Author

    Michele Leggott

    Michele Leggott was the inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate 2007-2009 and received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2013. She is the author of nine books of poetry, including, Vanishing Points, Heartland, Mirabile Dictu and Journey to Portugal. Leggott's latest work, Mezzaluna: Selected Poems published in 2020, gathers poems from all nine of her previous collections. Leggott lives in Auckland, where she teaches in the English Department at the University of Auckland.

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      Book preview

      Vanishing Points - Michele Leggott

      Notes

      THE LOOKING GLASS

      carina / the keel

      Macoute slips off the wall and rests

      a moment on one of the leather chairs below

      the flag   he’s got swallows on the wire

      KERERŪ AEROBATICS above the cliff

      and his own white noise to insert

      between the London planes   he is the tree

      in the view he holds up one arm

      against the falling sun he is the child

      you caught on the print the plan scribbled

      once on the back of an envelope   TŪĪ WINGBEAT

      over the house where Macoute sits thinking

      in a leather chair and above him

      a white space   sand in the footbath

      whisky under the stars

      Macoute has long ears but he cannot

      always see where he is going and tonight

      will bring the Geminids overhead

      in a dark sky without a trace of light

      twenty-two steps to the door   six between

      door and throughway   nine from the bed

      to the back door   count them and be sure

      use your hands and your feet   Macoute

      down from the wall and moving silently

      among the sleepers in the house

      horologium / the clock

      raining in my heart ever since we’ve been

      apart   the parabola of his hands above his

      open mouth and the shout of something that could be

      joy or another outburst of pain   his legs folded

      the long arms reaching for visible perfection   his brother

      contemplative a few feet away   the alarm goes off at 2 a.m.

      she walks up the white path to the point

      meteors a thousand petals deep spread

      their blanket up there   nobody

      connects his wooden fingers with the parabolic

      flight of the wood pigeons   the silent witness

      RURU IN THE LIGHT   bright events

      in every part of the sky except the radiant

      music in my heart my fingers apart   the one

      you won’t see because it’s heading straight for you

      columba / the dove

      when the holes in the card line up

      with constellations drawn by an unnamed lady

      starlight falls precisely on human eyes

      looking into Urania’s mirror

      feet walk over seagrass   smooth

      to the sole   a square mat

      that marks thresholds   to be useful here

      you must hold the cards upside down

      the lady is praised

      for the beauty of her designs

      but she remains anonymous   her View

      of the Heavens stands on its head   trembling

      apus / the bird of paradise

      Macoute is a gunny sack   sitting

      out front on a plastic chair

      with a cup of tea   the chicks are fledging

      he watches their unsteady flight   square tails

      upending on the wire but safe this time

      did he pick up the one in the box

      and throw it into the air   or did the ruru

      get there first   expect

      MAJOR DELAY   attached to the outside

      wall   mirrored on another inside behind

      glass   in the throughway a line of coats

      and jackets on their pegs   Macoute puts his hands

      in pockets and through sleeves to feel the warmth

      that lingers in out of season clothing   he is visible

      everywhere tonight   settles for a single locus

      when morning comes and takes his smoky tea

      outside to watch the swallows and the islands

      vela / the sails

      M: How about a sail?

      L: Not yet. I don’t want to leave.

      M: You know they can’t see you.

      L: I dreamed your eight fingers.

      M: But who stitched the front and the back?

      L: Sail makers.

      grus / the crane

      the chain corroded and bit

      into her neck

      which became swollen and infected   we removed

      the collar and threw it away

      then took her to KAMO with the windows down

      everyone struggling for air

      a chick in the house

      on our return   shrilled in his hand

      at the touch of finger to sleek head

      he stepped outside and threw it into the air

      upraised arm   SCATTER OF PRINT

      words on the evening sky

      she is ahead of us   plunging

      into the shallows of the estuary

      to chase ducks and a heron

      that lifts off with a noise like an old book

      being opened   she stops short ASTOUNDED

      by waves carrying the barking of a dog

      from cliffs across the river screened with trees

      sculptor / the sculptor

      from a plan perfectly original

      AROMATIC in its courting of bees sightlines

      and the echo from the wall of trees

      they face each other they turn away

      there is the view from here

      and the view from there   they are not the same

      so you will need to keep on moving

      stepping in and out of frame   watching

      for ligatures   the black wall

      the white fireplace   the raked path

      the perimeter walk   Cassiopeia

      and Virgo whirling up the drive

      CANIS leaping for the pūriri moths

      NOCTUA plucking them out of the air

      the paepae bright with OWL LIGHTS

      travellers returned to the house

      pyxis / the mariner’s compass

      now we will listen

      to the insistent call of the kingfisher

      the pheasant tock-tocking in the undergrowth

      the morepork’s hunting cry

      riroriro sparkling in the trees

      mynah dawdling on the lawn

      wingbeat of tūī

      wingbeat of kererū

      magpie removed from the house

      motley ducks across the river

      oystercatchers keening overhead

      the heron’s breaking spine

      the endless disputation of swallows

      a zodiac a zodiac a zodiac

      circinus / the compass

      Macoute and the lady follow each other

      around the circle  I sent a letter to my love

      and on the way I dropped it   except it’s a handkerchief

      and the children sitting cross-legged  someone must have picked it up

      and put it in their pocket   are watching the thief

      could have been you could have been you could have been you

      as he stoops behind each of them   they must not look

      as he passes   only eyes from the other side

      can give the alarm  could have been you could have been you

      he’s gone before she finds it and the circle erupts as she

      tries to catch him   Lucy Locket

      lost her pocket   he’s almost there   Kitty Fisher

      found it   slides into her empty place just as she

      touches his shoulder  I sent a letter

      to my love   she starts around the ecliptic as they chant

      in a ring on the field waiting for three o’clock

      norma / the square

      M: How did we know when to look?

      L: I’ve forgotten.

      M: What was it teaching us?

      L: Poetics.

      M: Are you sure about that?

      L: It could have been 2.30.

      pictor / the painter

      peihana the pheasant warou the swallow

      rakiraki introduced ducks   we are in the Primers

      listening for the fall of a handkerchief

      over chanting voices   maina the mynah makipai the magpie

      matuku-moana the white-faced heron

      from this side the left arm upraised

      from that side the right   and the words running

      BACKWARDS   there she is a W

      here looking north a starry M

      birds in the trees   bathtub on its platform

      above the raised beds   lovers embracing

      among the nīkau on the side of the hill

      olives lemons the passionfruit vine

      green grapes tamarillo the artist with his palette

      stepping out from the sycamore planes   the SIGHTLINES

      the hoist and the fly   a starry circle   a portent

      chamaeleon / the chameleon

      lizard fingers enter the house   saying

      you drew me out of darkness   you set me against

      the evening sky   I flutter I tremble

      my tail is the lost curve of the kiore moana

      the little horse in flight   the tin fish by the window

      and clearest of all   mirror image of my hand

      in silhouette   dreamed out of darkness

      and the voices of children a long way off   singing

      MICHAEL ROW THE BOAT ASHORE

      the river the estuary the mudflats

      lizard and seahorse   you drew me out of darkness

      SISTER HELP

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