Grounded
Coming back, the land didn't know him.
Not the soft air, peaks and skittering leaves
or blurred faces rising out of the fog
along Kingsford-Smith Drive, not the river
haze of the city
opening into his eyes
through trickle of morning sun
or the aging pier at Breakfast Creek
he half-imagined had been built for him —
the land under his feet and brooding
in shadows cast by the sheer rise of the city
had forgotten him. The odour of the river
drummed into shifting rock
was familiar, but wafted the frail taint
of foreign ghosts. He thought he knew
the sounds: low hum of ferry coming into dock
with passengers murmuring
home home
but it was not. The clouds
had grown heavy, the radio
in hard accents, promised more
rain continuing through the night.
In a crowded bar on Merthyr Street
he trembled like a sailor or fisherman
having seen the slope of the world and its infinite
smallness, having returned
with the illusion he had not changed, but friends
had grown old and disappeared
into home and heartbreak.
After short black and numbing
football on the TV, he rose
weightless as a ghost
and followed the riverbank, with drifts
of crows crying ironic above him
coming home coming home
the land didn't know him.
Graham Nunn
2 comments:
This reminds me for all sorts of reasons of the poem I wrote about a suicide at Kangaroo Point off the Story Bridge - ironic name for the bridge with all the deaths. Powerful poem beautifully crafted Graham.
and how poweful this section:
"he trembled like a sailor or fisherman
having seen the slope of the world and its infinite
smallness"
and
"he rose
weightless as a ghost
and followed the riverbank, with drifts of
crows crying ironic above him
coming home coming home"
conveys such a stark feeling of disconnection
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